The Fourth Grade Revisited

There I was in my beautiful serape and sombrero, singing in Spanish. It was Show and Tell and was I showing and telling. What was this tan girl from Texas doing singing a song in Spanish on a wintery day in Ohio? My past memory included the class thinking this new girl was stuck up and unfriendly. I detected their dislike right in the middle of my song. Is it any wonder I spent the rest of the school year pretending I was sick? My mother must have been worried. I never told her how much they didn’t want me to speak a different language or wear those fancy clothes.

Imagine how I dragged that feeling with me through the next 54 years. I was always thinking: “Don’t be different, don’t stand out, don’t have something to share.” Ugh! Here I am, launching a new business and lugging along that sense of being disliked and being shunned because I dared to be proud of knowing Spanish in the fourth grade in Ohio! It’s been holding me back for years. Every time I stand to speak in front of an audience, I re-experience that shame which feels like a boulder in the pit of my stomach! As I have been preparing podcasts of my recorded voice, I’ve felt the fear and I’ve continued to prepare anyway. Wouldn’t it be great to let go of that awful feeling and step into the spotlight with a sense of appreciation?

Thoughts create feelings that determine our actions which create our results.
Have you noticed how often this has come up for me in the past few weeks? Three? Four? Five times? Those are the times you’ve read about it, but I’ve encountered it in action a lot more than just those times I wrote about it! Lucky me.

Coaching to the rescue!  Yesterday a coach from one of the groups I’ve joined called to give me a free session. Guess what we talked about! The fourth grade. This is about the millionth time I’ve talked about it, but she had a great suggestion – rewrite the story. What a great idea! As I write this, I’m following the coach’s suggestion. I’m rewriting the fourth grade story before I conduct my first teleseminar I’m leading for this new business, Promise Power™.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Fast Rewind ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here’s 10 year old, Jackie. (Back then, I spelled my name the conventional way.) I’m talking to my mom about what I could do for Show and Tell at school. “Do you think they’d like to learn that song I’m always singing in Spanish? I really love the way the words just roll around in my mouth. I bet they would too.” My mom had a great idea. “Let’s go find that serape and sombrero you wore in the school play last year – it’ll be perfect with that song.”

Funny, it snowed the day of Show and Tell. I couldn’t believe how cold it was in Ohio compared to Corpus Christi, Texas. I wrapped the serape around me while I waited for the bus. When I got to school, all the girls wanted to know about the blanket and really liked all the pretty colors. We all thought it was scratchy but very pretty anyway. The sombrero! It was really fancy with all the gold braid and stones. The girls kind of squabbled over who got to try it on. 

When it came time to sing, I felt a little nervous but I started out by telling them how all the kids in my old school had to learn Spanish because we lived so close to Mexico. It seemed hard at first but then we realized what a great thing it was because the kids could talk to each other and most of our parents didn’t know what we were talking about. It was like a secret language.  They all wanted to know a secret language.

When I said I would teach them the song, they got quiet. First, I sang it all the way through and then said, “Let’s sing the first part together.” Lucky us! Mrs. Price knew how to play the piano, so she sat right down and played along with us. By the end, the whole class could sing the song and everyone was excited. It was so popular that our homeroom performed it in the Christmas pageant – with me in front, wearing my serape and sombrero.

Now that’s a good story!

© 2007, Jacqueline Hale

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