1st Place Dick

The other night my lovely wife E and I were taking in the open mic night at Karma (a very cool little art house bar in Calgary's uber-hip Marda Loop) when some muscle bound tool--wait, I'm getting ahead of myself--when some guy with a crew cut came in with his girlfriend hanging off of his arm. Did I mention he was wearing a medal.
Out to the bar.
A medal.
Around his pickle barrel neck.

I was dying to know: 1) what the medal was for?; and 2) what on Earth possessed him to wear it to a bar?

Thankfully beer has always provided me with enough courage to be so brazen as to ask strangers wearing medals exactly what I should be celebrating them for, and this evening was no different. The owner of the bar was sitting nearby our "hero" and I stopped to ask him if he knew why A was all glamed up in gold medalions. He didn't, but shared my thirst for knowledge and encouraged me to go forth and ask.

With so many people counting on me, I plunged into A very intimate conversation with his girlfriend, G, and asked:

B- "Sorry to interupt, but I noticed when you came in that you were wearing a medal. Mind if I ask what you got that bit of hardware for?"
A- (wondering if he should punch the grin off my face and onto the floor)"You can ask. . ."
G- "--it's mine! I won it in a marathon! He put it on at my place--I don't know why. "
B- "Oh! So you're riding on her coattails!"
A- (clearly not pleased at my implication that he couldn't have done it on his own)"What's your name?"
B- "Brad. What's yours?"
A- "Scott. What's the date today?"
B- "The 25th--if these are going to get tougher, I want the medal."
S- "One year. One year from today I'll have my own marathon medal--BUT, you got to do it too. We'll meet back here, one year from today, and if you don't have a medal for running a marathon I get to kick your ass!"
B- "I'll be here!"
S- "And if you don't have a medal, I get to KICK. YOUR. ASS."
B- "Tell you what--I'll be here, but if I can't win a marathon I'm going to work out so that you can't kick my ass. Fair?"
S- "Shake on it."
B- (shakes pudgy hand)
S- "One year. I get to kick your ass. You better be here!"
B- "I will be. But don't get your hopes up about kicking my ass. I'm going to work out--pump iron. I'll be ready."
S- "One year."
B- "One year."

The owner was killing himself laughing. This dude Scott was a total pilon.

Thing is, I never got a satisfactory answer to my original question: why on Earth did he think wearing a medal to the bar would be cool? I mean, I only know of a handful of guys that could pull that kind of shit off, and they're all in the photo below:

Don't bother checking; Scott isn't there.