I belong to a 135 member Sweet Adeline chorus. We call it sport singing. It seems as though our mission in life is to win a gold medal at an international competition. (Yes, that’s what Sweet Adelines do, we all work very hard learning how to sing American barbershop music and compete with each other to see who’s the best at it!) We’ve been practicing, rehearsing, strategizing, working out, singing and dancing our fannies and vocal cords off getting ready for our next competition for a year and a half now. We’re heading off to Calgary in a few weeks to wow the competition with our talent and hopefully come home with at least a 10^th place finish. The competition is fierce!

So last week our team spirit coach asked us to tell the group how we felt the last time we each won some sort of a team event. This is an exercise we’ll be doing for the next few weeks, each week a few chorus members take turns telling us their victory stories. And we will all become inspired by them.  Uh-huh.

My problem: I don’t have a story. I cannot for the life of me remember any time I was ever on a team that ever won anything, much less a gold medal.

I know that life in America is very competitive, it’s our nature to be the best at whatever we do. We’re always working on our personal best, even at computer games! But I cannot get up in front of the group and brag about how many times Scurvy, the parrot, and I have beaten our East-West opponents playing my favorite computer bridge game. That’s not exactly the kind of inspiration story the coach has in mind.

I’ve been wracking my brain for ideas. My husband has been very competitive all his life. He has a trophy case full of statues, ribbons and inscribed cribbage boards to prove it. For a long time my one goal in life was to win a trophy that I could place next to his.

Many years back, we went on a cruise and I heard that were was to be a costume party aboard ship and the best costumed person would win a TROPHY! Cool. I figured this was something I might be able to pull off. I talked two other people into doing it with me, so I guess you could call us a team. I had what I thought was a terrific idea. We would dress up as Crayons! That’s right, crayons. The ship provided material for making costumes. We used big sheets of heavy colored paper, stapled into ovals to fit around us. We drew on the crayon logo, and cut out arm holes. Then we made matching colored cones for our heads. I thought we looked very funny in our outfits.

When the big night of the talent show/costume party finally arrived, we were feeling pretty silly and somewhat shy about going on stage in our goofy cardboard clothes. We couldn’t help but notice that many people had thought ahead about what to wear and came in real, probably rented, fancy costumes like you’d wear for a Halloween party or a dance. We actually felt sort of intimidated about the whole thing, but we screwed up our courage and lined up to walk onto the stage in the costume parade. Here come three walking crayons, among the gypsies, dance hall girls, and other clowns. There was one other original, hand made spur-of-the-moment costume in the parade. A husband and wife had dressed up as toilets with real toilets seats on their heads. They called themselves First and Second Seating. We were done for. How can crayons possibly compete against toilet seats?

When the laughing subsided and it was time for the elimination rounds, we were surprised to find out we were finalists. Oh my god! It was between us and the toilets. When the announcer finally pulled out the trophies and called out the winners, amazingly, Red, White and Blue, the Three Crayons, had won the contest. And I finally had a trophy.

Then the oddest thing of all happened: after the whole deal was over and done with, whenever we would walk onto the deck or stand at the buffet line, people would come up to us and say: Hey, look, it’s the crayons! We were celebrities (although nobody asked us for autographs.)

So as I watch and listen to my riser buddies talk about their team spirit I giggle to myself. I actually DO know what it feels like to win something, but I just cannot for the life of me share this experience with them. After all, even though I am a celebrity Crayon, red in fact, I'm still a very shy crayon at heart.

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