Anyway, in those years when I was starting out in band I was in the school district's "middle school" and met a number of new kids that have remained close friends to this day. In fifth grade I had a wonderful teacher named Miss Graham. She believed that reading was very important to anyone's long term development and she often took class time to just read books to us. Several of the "Little House on the Prarie" books, the Mouse and the Motorcycle and Charlotte's Web were the ones that stick out in my mind. We had a hamster in class and she would also bring in eggs with an incubator and allowed us to watch how the chickens grew inside the eggs. It was in this class that I met Deb. She was(and still is to me) the closest thing that I have ever had to an actual sister in this life. Through the years we became very good friends and each of us knew that we would always be there if the other ever needed a shoulder to lean on or just a hug to get through the day. Our personalities seemed to compliment each other's pretty well. I can without a doubt say that she is like a member of my family to me.
My fifth grade year was also the bicentenial, 1976. As a class project, my teacher thought that it would be neat to have each of her students design and color a square for a quilt about the country's first 200 years. I will tell you now that I cant draw to save my life. My dogs look like horses, my horses look like dragons and you dont want to know what my dragons look like. I was basically sure that I would be easily shown up by the others in class, but I decided to give it a try. I designed a square that looked like Alfred Hitchcock riding on a dragon. Across the top, I wrote, "Paul Revere's Ride" lest anyone being unfamiliar with my art wonder. The teacher also said that there would be additional room if any of us wanted to make additional squares. I thought, why not? No one seemed to mind the dinosaur I just added to it, so I'll try to make a more appealing one this time. I found a book of poems and writings in the classroom and I was taken by the cover of it. A flag draped in the foreground, various stars sitting about and an eagle perched over it all with outstretched wings. It really caught my eye, so I figured out that was the patch I would do. I tried to draw it as best as I could free hand using the fabric crayons provided to fill it all in. When I was done, I wasnt too overly impressed with it, but it sure beat the heck out of the previous square I made. After Miss Graham had all of the patches and was begining to piece the quilt together, she let us know something in class. That herself, the art teacher and a few of the other teachers were going to pick one square that they all liked the most and the student that designed that square would win the quilt. Great, there goes my chance.
The day comes when the quilt is finished and she brings it in to show us all how it turned out. It was nice to see how so many individual pieces could come together to make something much larger. Then came the moment that they were going to pick the winning square. I was standing more looking at the other students to guage the reaction of the winner, whomever it might be. They pointed to a square that they said they had all agreed on as being the winner. I didnt see anyone instantly screaming that it was theirs, so I looked down and saw them pointing at what appeared to be a large brown seagull fishing for oversized stars on a read, white and blue lake. I couldnt believe it, I had won the quilt. I had never won anything before in my life at all. EVER. I couldnt believe it, but I felt really good about myself and the other kids congratulated me as well which was a nice touch. The quilt was displayed in the school's disctrict office and those of us in the top few places got to get our pictures in the paper displaying it.
It wasnt an overly heavy quilt, but its something that I was very proud of. I kept it on my bed and used it quite a lot. I think that its still over at my mom's house as of this writing. Sometimes, its that second effort that we put forth that gets the results that we are looking for. As cliched as "If at first you dont succeed, try , try again" can be, it is none the less good advice. Dont ever give up easily on something that is important to you regardless what it is. Tenacity can be its own reward by conditioning us to continue to strive for what we want to achieve most and never settle for less then our best efforts in the end.
No, my drawing skills didnt improve at all as a result of that little competition. In fact, I was trying to show my son how to draw a dog and he reminded me that dogs are supposed to have four legs, not five. I didnt have the heart to tell him that the fifth 'leg' was supposed to be the tail. Somethings just never change.