I was looking through my parents’ file cabinet the other day for
one document or another and in one of the files was a newspaper
clipping from the Champaign-Urbana News Gazette of 1954.
I was looking through my parents’ file cabinet the other day for one document or another and in one of the files was a newspaper clipping from the Champaign-Urbana News Gazette of 1954.
The local cancer society had received a donation of 16 cents in coins taped to a piece of paper. A second-grade girl had sent the donation, the proceeds of a pet show she had organized. The donation came from the pet show entry fees (amount unspecified) and was net of the prizes awarded to each of the three entrants (species unspecified).
That second-grade girl was me.
I have no memory of this event.
Unlike some childhood legends from about the same time (a long train trip, a birthday party, a visit to Boston, the movie “Davy Crockett”), the pet show conjures no images or feelings, – positive or negative.
I don’t remember my parents ever referring to it as an example of anything – good or bad. My siblings, all younger, wouldn’t have been aware enough to use the memory later to admire (“you were already organizing stuff when you were only seven!”) or taunt (“remember that lame pet show you had?”)
In another file folder, I found a copy of my results from an occupational aptitude test that had changed throughout my school career.
The results from a couple of different tests showed that I had strong aesthetic leanings and negative interest in the outdoors, economic matters and social sciences.
So I don’t know where the economic and social pet-show organizing impulse came from. My parents were quoted in the article as not knowing where I got the idea either. “Maybe she got it from TV,” my mother surmiseds. At that time we had only had a TV for a few months, if I remember right, so I may have been more transfixed by what I saw on it than I am now.
Anyway, I can’t help admiring my seven-year old self for my entrepreneurial spirit, organizational abilities and compassion. In fact, I think it’s inspiring, so I’m going to do it again. I’m going to organize another pet show for a worthy cause.
There are a lot of details that will require attention: which worthy cause should receive the donation? Global or local? Medical, environmental or social?
Which pets should be eligible to enter? Dogs and cats, certainly … birds? Iguanas? Rodents? Should there be a size limit? I can see goats, maybe even a calf … but not, say, a full-grown bison.
And what should the judging criteria be? Cuteness is too subjective and might inspire people to put clothes on their pets. We’ll have a no-clothes rule, definitely. We could have a “Best Trick” category, and maybe a “Most Colorful.”
Please let me know what you think. Now that I’m not seven anymore, I’m going to need a lot of help. Send your ideas to me via email at [email protected] with “Pet Show” in the subject line.
I will follow up in future columns with a date, location and other parameters using the ideas you send. And some worthy cause will be the better for it.
