On Monday afternoon, a few days before Christmas vacation, our high school principal announced over the intercom a door-decorating contest between the classes. I looked around at the other juniors and noticed a lot of rolling eyes. "Who wants to do that?" someone groaned. I do, I thought. I even had an idea of a beautiful angel, like something out of a sixteenth century painting. Golden hair, halo, flowing robe...
I'll go home and make it myself, I decided. I was always sketching one thing or another. The other guys liked to play soccer or shoot hoops. I liked to draw. If my angel was good enough, maybe the athletic students would understand me better.
Gym was my least favorite period. I dreaded it. I was usually the last one picked for basketball, and my teammates never let me near the ball ~ they wanted to win. I just wished that when they saw my angel, the guys would realize I was good at something.
At home I unrolled a big sheet of paper on my dining room table and outlined the angel ~ face, wings, gown and hands. Then I colored her in with pastels, blending the shades until I got them just right. When I was finished, I raided my mom's gift-wrapping supplies for some gold tissue paper and pasted it behind the head for a halo.
It took me all evening. Finally I stood back and admired my angel. She wasn't half-bad. Careful not to smudge the colors, I rolled up the picture.
But at school the next day I got nervous about what the other juniors might say. What if they didn't think my angel was any good? What if they thought it was stupid that I'd spent all night on our door decoration? I decided to test it on my friends Jessica and Lauren. If there was anything wrong with it, they'd let me down gently.
I unrolled the paper watching for a reaction. They stared and stared and then they laughed. Both of them. They must really hate it, I thought.
"What's wrong?" I asked. "Is it ugly?"
"Ugly?" Lauren exclaimed. "It's not ugly. It's beautiful!"
"I'm laughing because it's so good," Jessica said. "I can't find anything wrong with it."
What a relief! Now I was ready to show my angel to everyone else. Holding the paper up to my chin, I turned and faced the class. "That's awesome, Jason!" came the response. "Cool! We're going to win!"
I put my angel up on the door. Suddenly it became "ours." During study hall, several of my classmates hovered near it. "Some blue would really set it off," Brian said. He looked to see if I agreed. "Go for it," I said. So he and Jeff wrapped blue paper around the door to frame our angel. "Something's still missing..."Lauren said. "I know. A Star!" She and Randi made a big one out of gold paper and cardboard. Kristin wrote a Bible verse on the angel's sash. Lea, Mike and Mark decorated the blue paper with little gold stars, turning it into sky. The door was looking better and better with everyone's touches.
When it was all finished, Josh, one of our star basketball players, walked over to the angel. "Nice work, Jason," he said. "I could never do something like that."
"That's the way I feel when I see you on the basketball court!" I laughed. Everyone else laughed too. Everyone except for Josh. He was still studying the angel on the door. He must not have heard me. His mind was probably on basketball.
Gym class was ninth period. I could feel my stomach churning even before I got to the locker room. After I changed, I stood and watched while the other guys warmed up. It amazed me how fast some of them dribbled the ball down court, how easily they made baskets. They seemed to float on air. Why care about drawing if you could do something like that?
Our gym teacher blew the whistle, our cue to line up. He checked to see that everybody was in proper uniform, then chose team captains ~ Justin and Josh. No matter what the sport, Justin and Josh were unusually the captains.
Now came the worst part: picking teams. One by one the others would be chosen and join their team, leaving me standing all alone. Here we go again, I thought, Josh went first.
"Jason," he said.
Everyone stopped talking, as shocked as I was. He must have made a mistake, I thought. He'd be better off playing by himself than with me on his team. A couple of boys laughed.
"What's so funny?" Josh asked. "I want Jason."
I walked over and stood beside him, wondering if I was dreaming. In no time the teams were chosen. (Things sure seem to move faster when you're not standing around waiting to be picked.) Then we started playing. Right away Josh passed me the ball. "Shoot," he said. I did. But the ball bounced off the backboard. "Good try," he said as everybody ran down court. As usual, Justin scored.
Josh brought the ball back to the other end of the court and threw it to me again. "Shoot," he said. This time the ball tipped off the rim. "Next time, Jason," he said.
He never gave up on me, encouraging me to take shot after shot. Finally one went in. "Way to go!" Josh yelled. "Good job!" My teammates slapped me on the back. I couldn't believe it. I had actually scored!
When I walked off the court, I felt different. Josh had given me a sense of what it meant to be part of a team. Each of us working with the others.
In the locker room I told Josh, "Thanks. He just smiled as if it were no big deal.
I would like to end this story by telling you that my team won the game and our junior class won the door-decorating contest. We didn't, in either case. But that's not important. What I learned is that whether you can draw good pictures or play a good game of basketball, you can be kind and get everyone involved. That's what it takes to make an angel.
