Confidence and Faith

They were about to announce the names of the winners. I sat passively with my team among hundreds of students. Of course I hoped they would win, but competition was so strong, I didn’t know if we stood a chance.

Our Odyssey of the Mind team worked hard all year with their two coaches. I brought them into the cafeteria for a thirty or forty minute work on a portion of their challenge. The part I worked with and their seven minute play would compete with schools from all over the region. It would be tough.

In the vast auditorium which was filled to capacity, we waited. One of our team members, a small, bright, boy asked me if he could sit in the aisle. “Well,” I answered hesitantly, “You can, but be careful you don’t get run over.” The child nodded.

“Why do you want to sit there?” I asked him.

“So I can be closer to run up to the stage when they call our school’s name,” he answered.

I sighed thinking…I hope he won’t be disappointed.

They called out the winners at the high school level, then the winners at the middle school level and finally the winners at the elementary level. “Schanen Elementary, Number One!”

The student sitting in the aisle ran fast and reached the stage before any of the rest of us. We screamed and jumped up and down and accepted the award. Our students yelled and clapped and the student who had been sitting in the aisle smiling confidently said to me, “I knew we would win.”

I should have known, also. Cheers for confidence and faith.

Faith in What You Know

Many years ago my father moved his family from a small town to the city where I was teaching. He had to register my brother at his assigned junior high school and asked me to join him.

The counselor talked about the school and how different the new large school was from the small school my brother had attended. "Don't expect him to do as well here in this sophisticated school as he did in that small town school," she cautioned my father.

I was nervous, thinking, Lady, you are talking to the wrong man. I worried that our father, a strong-willed man with a great deal of determination and goals for his children, might argue with the counselor. Instead, he remained silent.

We said our thanks and goodbyes and walked out of her office. As we approached the car, my father stopped, and turning to my young brother said confidently, "You know that woman in there? She is ignorant. She doesn't know you. You will do fine here as you always have."

I relaxed. That's my Dad, I said to myself. And my brother succeeded just like Daddy said he would.

Believe in Yourself

When I first met my husband's Uncle George, a tall Averell Harriman type person, he said, "Hello."

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I said, "Hello."

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Then he immediately follows with, "Do you eat chow chow?"

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My first thought, "What is this? What is wrong with this man?"

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He told me he made chow-chow, a relish you eat with hot dogs, hamburgers, and black-eyed peas.

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Uncle George - it turns out he was a very nice man - believed in himself and in his product. He kept on working on his chow-chow product and eventually the company expanded. His products now sell all over the country.

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He convinced me to buy a jar, and I eat the product to this day. But the most important lesson I learned from Uncle George was to believe wholly and completely in what you undertake. Good things will happen.