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Show far and wide. Then one day, I found one of my poems in our town newspaper." Mrs. Parker leaned over the desk towards Kim. "I was ecstatic. Our town had a population of thirty thousand and I knew that very night, thousands of people would be reading my poetry." Then she pulled off her glasses and let them hang around her neck from a gold chain. "Five years later I was published in a national magazine." Gol, thought Kim. Here she had a famous writer for a teacher and she hadn't even known it. "I'll tell you an interesting thing," said Mrs. Parker. "My feelings when I read my story in that national magazine weren't a great deal different from the day I read my three poems in the Proud Panther. I still wanted someone else to see them...It was like walking up a path that never ended." Kim thought for a moment about what her teacher was saying-that no matter how much recognition she got, she always wanted more." "Sort of like drinking lemonade on a hot day," "Precisely. " "Does that mean I shouldn't be spending all this time playing basketball? Kim asked. "Oh no," said Mrs. Parker emphatically. "I don't want you to stop climbing. But," she said thoughtfully, "you might consider taking a path that's a little more fulfilling." Mrs. Parker glanced down at her watch, and Kim knew she 152 |
