A Tree Grows...

I was 11-years old when I was first recognized as a writer. I had written since the womb but I wasn't mature enough to know what that meant until Mom raved about, my poem, Peas and Carrots, a true-life poem about a bag lady that rummaged through the garbage cans I passed on the way to school. Mom gave me the confidence to believe that I was a writer! I was something! She talked it up. I wish I had that hand-written, carefully scrawled poem that she told me was, "beyond my years". What I really learned that day and saved for 15 years later was that the greatest gift you can give your child is a strong self-confidence.

The next year, I gave a "talk" in church. I didn't know that I was being judged (on my speaking ability, not on my morality -- which I would have failed if anyone ratted me out for being nasty in the basement of the church), and a couple weeks later, the Mormon Bishop showed up at my house 30 minutes before I was to present my "talk" to the "Region".

"What?" I said. "My talk?" Someone dropped the ball and didn't relay the message to me.

"You'll need to put on a dress," He said. "I'll wait."

So I did while he waited. It was green double-knit with darker green stripes wrapped around me. I sewed it myself, and I wore knee-sox. I was that young. And I didn't wear panties because by then I had given up the practice of pants-up-butt. I was that progressive. I'd given up the thong long before its time.

And I rode with the Bishop to the cultural hall to compete with my "talk."

The hall was the size of a basketball court with bleachers around the room and it was crammed full of peopled chairs. It was the hottest ticket in town because the Salt Palace was barely built and certainly, there was no bigger place in town as the Liberty Park Stake Hall in 1971. Every chair was full. We arrived with only minutes to spare. And I did what I was told.

The bishop ran me back-stage. "Your turn!" And I walked out into a flooded spotlight, hot white-heat, to a podium taller than me. I stepped aside so I cold see the crowd. I had notes cards -- but they were blank -- so I set them aside and gave my ad-libbed speech. I must have learned the meaning of presence early in life because I wasn't scared. I said what I was supposed to say.

The bishop had coached me. The speech I had given in my Ward (competing against my very best friend) wasn't EXACTLY what they wanted represented that night in the region competition. Originally, I spoke about how drugs were bad for young people. He'd said that I needed to give a speech on Testimony. So I did, but I was 11 and no one can have a sound, realistic testimony of anything at that age, except that they might like Captain Crunch better than Oatmeal smothered in Charcoal Seasoning.

As I stood beside the cast-off podium, I was thinking of how I'd made out with the neighbor boy in the basement of the church and smoked pot with my brother the prior day. And certainly the roof would fall in if I talked about that. So I didn't and I stole my best friend's speech -- sort of -- I said what I knew they expected to hear. And they didn't even clap.

So the prissy girl with a frilly, white, dry-cleaned dress gave her book-marked and highlighted Testimony talk while flipping Book of Mormon pages and regurgitating what her parents had outlined for her. She won because she recited scripture and wore white tights. (Knee-sox were just barely trending.)

And I walked away with a 2nd place ranking out of two people and a taste of what it was like to speak in front of a few hundred people. What I knew for sure was that it wasn't scary.

So the next opportunity to enter a speech contest was when I'd started at a new Jr. High School. We moved to the suburbs to get my brother out of the bad element of East High School.  On the first day at my new school, I was repremanded for not tucking in my shirt. Obedience still isn't my stong feature. I spent many days in the Vice Principal's office because I refused to conform. I'd mock the VP by unzipping my pants in the hall, revealing more than he wanted me to reveal (I gave up wearing panties), but I'd tuck in my shirt tails. Then before walking into a classroom, out they'd come.  Brent had a phrase for that behaviour: Malicious Obedience.

So, onward we manage our way through daily life so I read. Read, read, read. And I eventually found myself in a speech contest and speaking in front of the entire school about a book I'd read, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. And I managed to package it up nicely so I finally won first place. I got a certificate; printed out on the old blue Xerox Mimeograph machine. It was not even remotely close to what I came in 2nd place with for my plagarized Testimony speech: Eternal Happiness and acceptance into the Kingdom of Heaven.