I’m not normally the type of guy who wins things for individual physical prowess achievements.

My twin brother won stuff when we were little, but not me. When we were six, he won first-place at some summer swimming race in the Hampton (that’s Iowa) Municipal Pool. He swam fast, and I didn’t swim so fast. He won, and I lost. I was really bitter.

He got a blue ribbon.

I got a white one for participation.

He offered to trade me.

I still cried.

So I’m taking this badminton class this semester. It’s really cool. I get up at the ungodly hour of 9 a.m. and stroll (drive, actually) on over to the Physical Education Building, where I’m run through an hour of hard-core, butt-kickin’, smash-face badminton.

From smashes to clears to short serves to long serves to court dives to getting all tangled up in the net, it’s a real treat. And the other day, Dawn, my instructor, let us play with some super-cool, high-tech, confidential, experimental, new-on-the-market badminton rackets.

At the beginning of the class I traded in my amateurish standard PEB-issued racket for one of these bad boys. Oh my, what power, what sheer force all in the palm of my badminton-chisled hand. I thought I could do no wrong. I was smashin’, drop-shotin’, hitting ’em deep and always on target.

As it so happened, this was the day of the finals. It was the day that separated the bad from the good, indeed the men and the women from the boys and the girls.

And there was no stoppin’ me.

I had a new racket, an attitude of domination — and oh yeah, a doubles partner who just happens to be the best badminton dude in the class. Maybe that had something to do with it. Then again — nah, it had to be my racket.

Regardless, we flew through the finals. Blake, my partner, hit a few good shots — OK, maybe all of our good shots — and I did OK, too. Like when Blake would say hit it — the shuttlecock, that is — sometimes I actually would. And like when Blake would say hit it over the net, once or twice I actually did.

And like when Blake would say after I got the shuttlecock wedged in the net, “It’s all right; we’ll get ’em,” he would. And I’d have a chance to show some people my racket. I was cool.

And in the end, I was a champion.

It was a two-out-of three match, and we won the first two games. The class cheered. They chanted my name and wanted my autograph. I was carried out of the gym on the shoulders of my fans. “Chris is the best,” they said, as we passed the Campanile on the way to the football stadium, where most of the student body had gathered to present me with a really special award: the golden shuttlecock for the best badminton player in the whole world.

Actually, they didn’t do any of that.

But my dream about being carried out of the gym and the chants and stuff seemed so real. It was like I was sticking my tongue out at all those Hampton fartheads — like my brother — who said I was slower than an inflatable date in the water.

I had finally been vindicated.

Then I woke up, late for badminton class, of course, and realized I had added a little to the reality. In reality, I do suck at badminton and Blake and I really did win golden shuttlecocks. But the class didn’t cheer or chant or put anything but their coats on their shoulders.

In fact, I don’t think anybody really cared who won the Badminton 101 Doubles Tournament but me. But then again, how many of my classmates have had something to prove for the better part of 16 years? Not many, I’ll bet.

And besides, no one could appreciate the golden shuttlecock like I can. It sits in my office. And people talk about it. Well, most of the time I bring it up. I tell them what a stud I was on the court that day, how I had to carry the team, how nobody wants to play me now because I’m so good.

Yep, I lie a little. But at least I’ve stopped crying.

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Chris Miller is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Marshalltown. He is editor in chief of the Daily.