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Show 76 I was her age, and didn't think it too dishonest to enter it in her name. The prize was a thin volume of poems by Robert Burns: "Tarn O' Shanter. " Revo could never understand why it wasn't her book when it came, addressed to her, and I could never understand why is wasn't my book, since it was my poem which had won it. At any rate, it confirmed me as a poet. "Which would you rather do, read a book, or write one?" my Fifth Grade school teacher asked the class. I thought about this question and turned out to be the only one in class who answered: "I'd rather write one, because I could do both,read and write it then." My teachers words of praise for this choice catapulted me into the vocation of writing. The feat wasn't so much picking the right answer, as winning the praise of my teacher, Jim Moore, my cousin, which I had tried vainly to do all winter. I had spent a miserable year under his tutelage. Mama thought he really liked me but was afraid to show favoritism because of our relationship, but I felt his underlying dislike of me, especially since he had seemed to pointedly humiliate me in class sometimes, on a personal basis. My teacher the next year, Mr. Harwood, made up for him. I became quickly "teacher's pet" to Mr. Harwood, a young man with a wife five years his senior, from Missouri. They were non-Mormon in our Mormon community, but open-mindedly entered into all our affairs. I came to adore Mr. Harwood. He played the violin and I accompanied him. They became fast friends of Mama and Papa, were guests in our home often, and I baby-sat their little daughter, Ruth. |