GIVING KIDS SOME HOPE The words people in authority use on those under them, can either open a door of confidence to that person or slam it in his or her face. Cyrano der Bergerac trying to woo Roxanne into loving him in spite of his big nose, perfectly capsulizes my point. “Roxanne, If you let fall one harsh word from off that height, you crush me.” When I was in grade school my fifth grade teacher had us all try out for a part in a little skit. I gave it my best shot: “Godfry Gordon Gustfuss Gore, No doubt you've heard that name before” “No, no, no, no no! That's way to fast: Julianne, you try it.” At that time I was quite self conscious about having chipped off a front tooth and had taken to talking faster and with my hand over my mouth to cover my ugliness. That bit of untactful correction on the teacher's part really pretty much soured me about ever wanting to do any public speaking, From that time on I never tried out for a part in any play or program. I bought into the curse that teacher had laid on me, “I can't be in plays; I talk too fast.” But after we'd moved to Lebanon Oregon, I lucked into an English class conducted by a sweet middle-aged lady with a beautiful spirit, Ellen Wilshire. She treated every student with genuine love and respect. One day she amazed me by reading one of my themes to the class, and other times she also had me read certain passages aloud. And the more I did that, the more confidence I developed. Naturally I signed up for her class in my senior year and darned if I didn't get myself elected English class president. Somehow she saw something in me that planted a seed of confidence that a few years later sprouted into my deciding to major in English rather than Biology. The words we speak are like seeds and the ears of hearers are the ground in which those seeds either sprout as blessings, or as curses. After I got medically discharged from the Air Force a year later, my parent's divorce brought me back to North Dakota where I found myself enrolled in Winter Quarter Speech class conducted by a steely-eyed somewhat ominous looking teacher named Morgan Kjer. And to make things worse, several sons of well-known lawyers, doctors and even the college President Haverty's son, Mike, were in that class. Many of them had amazing confidence, and the better they sounded the more worried I became. They'd all had high school speech, a class I had carefully dodged. The only thing that kept me from dropping was that Merle Johnson in the seat beside me was so terrified that I decided,”If Merle doesn't drop, neither will I.” Well the time came for my first speech, an informative attempt to show the class how to cook soup burgers, a dish I had recently discovered. I trembled my way up to the podium and proclaimed, “The first step in making soup burgers is to stick your buns in the over until they are toasted.” The roar that went up was my first discovery that a little humor can lighten the fear load a lot. Well I finished the speech to good applause and decided, “maybe I won't drop speech, after all. Merle survived that class too, although he trembled like cold bunny rabbit before every speech. He later conquered his fears and went on to a full career teaching social studies at Moorhead High. The biggest fear test I had later in college came when I started student teaching at Fargo Central. The grapevine had revealed that the class I was going to face consisted of some of the most notorious “hoods” in school. The guys all dressed like Bowser of the band Sha-Na-Na. There were even a couple of rock musicians, and word had it that some of them smoked grass. The ladies in the class all looked quite teachable and seemed polite enough. Cathy Barner, my beautiful student teaching adviser, had apparently had little trouble at all with that group, but she said that the guy who student taught before I came had made the mistake of calling some of the boys “Punks.” He never finished the term. So when Cathy Barner introduced me to the class and promptly left me alone to go have coffee, needless to say I was a wee bit a'feerd'. Thankfully, an inspiration came and I had the class do something spontaneous: I had each person stand up and tell the class all about themselves. This gave me a chance to coax them along with questions and banter and it ended up being a fun hour of laughter and fun. I hadn't planned that; it just sort of popped up into my mind to do. Truthfully, I think that unexpectedly fun time came as the answer to a little prayer I said on the way up to the front, “Jesus, you gotta help me; I got nuthin.” The upshot of all this is simply this. We must learn to realize that words are the most powerful weapons we possess, either for good or evil; either to bless, or curse. Positive, hope-filled words always bring good things; pessimistic grumbling, complaining and dirt dishing never serve one well.   Gene Pinkney - - 3/29/ 21 For the daily News - - edited for html, 08-2021 edited html update 08-15-2021