Fill in the Dash
Noel Laflin
August 20, 2014
The speech tournament was a week away, and I was
stuck. I did not have a clue as to what
to talk about. Anxiety and the dread of
failure had gotten the better of me. I
was fresh out of ideas.
With every intent of dropping out of the speech team,
I went to our advisor late one afternoon after school and broached the subject.
“I don’t have a topic, Mr. Reich,” I stammered. “You might want to replace me.”
Ed Reich looked at me, pathetically slouched in the
classroom chair, and walked to the blackboard.
He picked up a piece of chalk and outlined a crude headstone.
He wrote a name along with two dates, side-by-side,
directly beneath it.
“What do you see, Noel?” he asked, dusting the chalk
off his hands.
“Well, it looks like a tombstone, I guess,” I said,
slightly intrigued.
“What else do you see,” he probed.
“Ah, well, a name and dates – year born and died,” I
summed up.
“Good. But,
what’s missing? Forget about epitaphs and Bible verses. There is something key
that I omitted. Do you see it?”
I looked at the drawing for another second. It struck me immediately.
“There’s no dash between the dates!” I shouted. “There’s no small line, Mr. Reich. Every
grave marker has that symbol separating the dates.”
“Bingo!” he said, and a wide smile crept across his
tired face. He grabbed the chalk and
added the missing piece of the puzzle. He then circled and circled it until the chalk broke in his hand.
“So, what does that tiny, insignificant little line
signify,” he asked, looking me directly in the eye.
“An entire life,” I said, surprising myself.
“Right!” he replied.
“That small dash represents an existence - the summation to a life - eventually a symbol that will stand in for all of us. And to think, it’s all represented
by the smallest of lines."
"How often do we overlook the obvious?" he asked. "How many times do we miss what really counts - as represented by that dash between two dates? You know, Michelangelo once said: ‘I saw an angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.’ Well, I’m handing you a chisel.”
"How often do we overlook the obvious?" he asked. "How many times do we miss what really counts - as represented by that dash between two dates? You know, Michelangelo once said: ‘I saw an angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.’ Well, I’m handing you a chisel.”
My ninth grade speech advisor put the chalk back
beneath the board, turned and dusted his hands once again. I swear the dust was
that of marble.
“Well,” he asked, “do you still want to quit?”
“No,” I replied quietly. “No way, sir.”
I raised myself from the chair and slowly walked to
the door. There was another anxious
student waiting outside hoping to have a word with our coach.
“Heading home?” he asked slyly, while he erased the
board. “You'll probably pass the old cemetery down the road, won't you?”
“Yes,” I mumbled, in answer to both questions. But my head was already spinning with the very idea of that unplanned stop along the way.
“I’ve got a speech to write," I said, turning to my coach with a smile two miles wide.
And with that, I dashed out the door.
“I’ve got a speech to write," I said, turning to my coach with a smile two miles wide.
And with that, I dashed out the door.
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