The Story of Four Girls and One Boy: Cour·age

–noun

1.the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.

Everyone has a star they burn to follow. Not everyone takes hold of their star and hangs on for a ride. Madison is one of those that clutches to every star she can get her hands on. She has more courage than I could have ever imagined at her age. A couple of weeks ago she comes home from school and asks me if she could run for SGA (Student Government Association). Of course I was her biggest cheerleader. I thought she was a very brave person wanting to run for something that tends to be more a popularity contest than anything else. They were to prepare speech to be given that Friday and they would take a vote. The top two with the most votes would do a runoff campaign the following week. She wrote her speech completely by herself and I was very impressed with what she had to say. The only advise I gave her was not to promise things that wasn’t within her control, extra recess, new lunch menu, etc. I picked her up from school that afternoon and she informed me she had lost the first round of voting. I was of afraid of this outcome with her being the new kid. I gave her some encouraging words and then she blurts out she was joking and had actually won, not only won but got the most votes. They were allowed to bring in one poster for the following week of final campaigning. She came up with slogans like, “Be the star you are…vote 4 Madison” with silver star stickers all around it. Another slogan was, “Vote 4 Mads and you’ll be glad. She took each letter of her name and used them to describe her strong character traits. At the bottom she used a smarties candy wrapper and wrote “Be Smarties…Vote 4 Maddie. I thought she did a wonderful job. Unfortunately she didn’t win the last round of voting. She was very upset. She wanted it so badly. She cried and I cried with her. It’s hard to see you child want something so badly and not able to accomplish it. I told her how brave she was being the new kid and running for a position like this. That I was so impressed and proud of how far she had gotten in the campaign to think about how all the kids felt that didn’t even make in the first round. I’m quite sure my words were not very encouraging. After all, those types of things just really give you a big ole kick in the gut when you loose. She just needed her time to cry and be by herself. By the way, she was perfectly fine a few hours later.

She comes home with a paper and wants to sign up for a cross country run. All the elementary schools within the county district were involved. Honestly, I didn’t think she was prepared for such a competition. After all, it was a two mile run. Had this been during or right after soccer or basketball I would have been more encouraging but I just didn’t feel her body was prepared for such a run. She got upset with me and thought I was being unsupportive her but honestly I felt like she didn’t really grasp what run was going to be like. I don’t know maybe I should have handled it differently. Should I have just said, “Sure Madison, I think you should go for it”. Instead of me giving her the realistic view. I told her of course I would support her if she wanted to do the run. So Saturday morning off to the cross country competition we went. There were 116 fifth grade girls competing. Bless her heart she started off strong but by the time she was back in viewing area she was walking. She only had about a half a mile left but she was burned out. She picked back the pace and finished the run. Not sure what she placed but when we left there were still some girls “walking” the course. lol You got to give the girl credit, she tries.

To follow your star takes a lot of courage and that is something my dear Madison has.

{The race begins}