When I was in elementary school, we had carnivals twice a year, one in the fall and one in the spring. The carnivals were family fun nights, where we went to school for a few hours and played games, ate hot dogs and cotton candy, and entered raffles.

One year, the prizes were themed after the solar system. There were posters, freeze dried ice cream (remember that?), key chains–things like that. If you won, you got one of those “good” prizes. If you played a game and lost, though, you still got a few glow-in-the-dark stars, the kind you can stick on your ceiling.

Those stars were at every game, so I played and lost a few times, and still got all these plastic stars and planets.

I heard one of the teachers explain the prizes to a parent. I thought I heard her say the stars were the “constellation prize,” and it made sense to me. I could take these stars home and stick them to my ceiling in formation. I could make the Big Dipper and Orion. That was pretty cool.

It was a few years until I realized what that teacher actually said–the prize you get even when you don’t win is the consolation prize. 

Years later, this is my favorite thing I’ve ever misheard.

It sounds like a good band name. It was the name of an album, long after I misheard the phrase in elementary school.  

I use “Constellation Prize” as a name for random creative projects I’m working on, especially when I don’t have a plan for where the project is going. It’s a label I use for my own reference, so later on, I know, yes, that was a random thing I did for a bit. 

And like those random stars and planets I got in elementary school just for trying, the name fits.