It's Not a Beauty Pageant

Last evening I took my daughter to a scholarship meeting.  My husband thought we were going to find out about different scholarships available.  This was not the case.  It was one scholarship that currently there isn’t any money for, but they hope to have some.  And if we win and go to state then if we win that there is scholarship money. 

It gets better.  It is a beauty pageant.  I take that back, they said it wasn’t a beauty pageant it is a scholarship program.  Does this sound familiar?  There are categories: Interview, Fitness, Talent, and Self Expression.  They even said they were hoping to raise enough money to have a Spirit Award also known as a Miss Congeniality award.

Many thoughts passed through my mind during this meeting.  I can only imagine the thoughts that passed through my daughter’s.  I did get a few enlightening looks during the informative meeting.  Of course, I tried to give her all kinds of excited and encouraging looks even though I knew there was no way she would be down with any of it.

My daughter is reserved.  She is pretty and kind and smart and sarcastic and quite humorous but not usually around other people.  Being that she is my daughter we walked out on the same wavelength.  “So you want to do it right?” I said.  She looked at me like I had grown another head and laid an egg while walking out of the building.  She said no that she didn’t want to do it and asked me what her talent would be.  I reminded her that apparently they will find one for her if she didn’t think she had one.  (Sound familiar?  They also offered to provide dresses.) 

This was at the point when I couldn’t hold back anymore.  “Hey I know what you could do!  Ain’t nobody got time for that!  You do the perfect imitation of that.  Or you could do your Kate Winslet impression.”  She does a fantastic Kate Winslet impression from an awards show she saw once.  It is the funniest thing.  She cracks us up every time because she is so good at keeping a straight face.  She didn’t think she could do that in front of a panel of judges.  This would be when I came up with the best idea of all. 

This morning I presented my idea. “I have the perfect idea for the talent portion of that thing you don’t want to do.” I said (Insert annoyed teenage girl look here) “Miss Congeniality.  You do a monologue from the movie all about how it isn’t a beauty pageant it’s a scholarship program.  It’s PERFECT!”  While she did think it was funny she didn’t agree to do it.  I explained to her that the way I see it she would either make them laugh or she would make them annoyed.  It doesn’t compute with me how that wouldn’t be funny. 

I think that if my daughter was less like me and was able to relax and just go with it, there is no way she wouldn’t crush the talent portion of that competition.  The rest of it may take some work.  Interviewing is intimidating in any situation.  (We tend to forget that the interviewers are also human.)  Fitness?  Well…doing a jazzercise routine on a stage is not really our thing.  (We stopped for sundaes at McDonald’s on our way home.)  Self Expression?  Well yeah…we have all sorts of ways of expressing ourselves around here.  Not many of them would be good on stage. 

I don’t know what next year looks like for her.  I don’t know if we will get any scholarships to help with college.  I don’t even know where she will go to college.  There are so many unknowns about this year as well as next.  We are on this adventure together.  I worry about her.  I worry about me.  In acknowledging that I suppose I realize how ridiculous it is to be worried.  Not one ounce of worry will change what the future holds and it will only rob us of our peace for today.  Besides we have the best tour director.  We don’t know, but God already knows His plan for her and for us.  I think we best both get on the boat, it is taking off with or without us.  It’s going to be an adventure.  Maybe not an adventure that includes a beauty pageant but to be sure as far as God and I go, we both think she is a beauty.  

I almost forgot!  If you want to use that Miss Congeniality bit for your own scholarship program?  Yeah that's a freebee so let me know how that works out for you.  I really want to know if the judges would think it was as funny as I do.