Fill in the Dash

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.”

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.