You Can Do This by Tricia Lott Williford

Author:Tricia Lott Williford [Williford, Tricia Lott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Life / Women's Issues
Publisher: The Navigators
Published: 2017-06-19T16:00:00+00:00

I discovered I always have choices and sometimes it’s only a choice of attitude.

JUDITH M. KNOWLTON

REMEMBER THAT LITTLE girl in her Betsy Ross costume? Let’s go back to that girl. Because the story isn’t over.

I came home with all of the Betsy Ross costuming and paraphernalia, and I shoved it all into a corner of my closet. The next day, when I was supposed to wear it, I couldn’t bring myself to put it back on. I didn’t want to try again. Could you blame me? It was all too much. I was so homesick for my old school. I begged my parents to withdraw me from this new place. I wanted to go back to the teachers, the hallways, the playground, the very everythings I remembered in the safe nest of the school we had left behind. I even missed the smell of the hand soap in the bathroom. I started my campaign to abort this stupid mission and go back to the land from whence I had come.

“She hates me, Mom. She hates me.”

“Tricia, now let’s think about this. Teachers don’t hate their students. She’s just not as kind as the other teachers you have had. I promise, she doesn’t hate you.”

“I think she does, though.”

“She doesn’t hate you.”

“Then she really, really, really, really doesn’t like me. At all.”

I begged and pleaded to go back to my old school, but sadly, it was all to no avail. There is a reason little people are born to big people, and the decision wasn’t mine to make. My fate was sealed in my new school, and together we would have to find a way to make this work.

My mom has always had a way to get her kids on board with her great ideas, and she presented a plan that would call for some seriously clever thinking. She said, “Well, we’re going to play a little game, you and me. Every day before you get on the school bus, we will think of something nice you can say to Mrs. Wretched when you see her. And every single time she looks at you, smile at her.”

“Mom, she doesn’t smile. Not at all.”

“And that’s a terrible way for her to go through life, but she doesn’t have to smile for our game to work. The only one who has to smile is you. Because here’s the truth: It’s pretty easy to like someone who smiles first. With all your smiles and kind words, we’ll trick her into liking you.”

I was skeptical, but I didn’t have any better ideas. So we set the plan in motion. Operation: Smile First.

I remember standing inside the front door, watching for the headlights of the bus through the line of pine trees. I breathed my hot air onto the window, drawing hearts in the fog I’d just made with my own steam, and I practiced the things I would say to Mrs. Wretched. I practiced so that I could learn the sound of my own voice, just in case it failed me in the moment when I needed it to sound kind and confident.

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