I’ve told my boys over the last few years when I’ve encouraged them to participate in contests or sports or scouts that they can’t win what they don’t enter. If you don’t participate in archery, you can’t win. If you don’t enter the writing contest, you won’t have any chance of winning. In fact, McKinley entered an archery tournament last year and shot targets at 20, 30, and 40 yards and he ended up placing third in the state for 40-yard target. That was his FIRST time ever shooting from that distance. When we got those results, we had a good conversation about how you might surprise yourself when you enter a contest, even if it makes you a little uncomfortable to put yourself out there.

When I was a kid, I loved participating in 4H and entering things in the fair. I’ve encouraged the kids to enter their stuff and 4H projects into the fair as well. Currently, I love entering things, like my knitting, photography, and cooking in our county fair (the San Mateo County Fair). This year I entered a bunch of photographs and one knitted item, and several sewn costume items, (and a bunch of food, but more on that later).

I struggled to narrow down the thousands of pictures to just a few standouts. I tried to keep the interesting ones in a folder in iPhoto throughout the year so that I didn’t have to choose pictures when I was filling out the entry form. The best-laid plans… went awry. I only did that foldering or tagging for about half the year and the folder didn’t have a few of the pictures I knew I wanted to enter in the fair, so I had to do a fair bit of hunting those down at the last minute when I was entering pictures. In the end I only entered 6 pictures and I had three that I really would have loved to enter but couldn’t.

These are photos I considered entering, but chose not to:

These were the ones that I wanted to enter but couldn’t:

These are the pictures that I actually entered this year:

In particular, I was so excited to enter my photographs and two costume hats this year. I went to the fair Saturday when it opened to check them all out and see what I won. I was so completely disappointed that none of my photographs won anything and that only one of my hats won something, a second place ribbon. I was feeling very sorry for myself and I was moping through the quilt section having my own pity party while half-heartedly looking for my mom’s quilts when I heard a guy telling his friends and wife about a picture he saw.

He started describing the picture about a dolly that looked like it had been thrown or fallen out of a four story window and laid on the ground with a missing leg and the dress was all askew. He couldn’t get over the name of the picture and how the picture really showed Lost Hope.

Lost Hope

I hung around behind them eavesdropping to hear the rest of his story and then went along my way after he finished. I thought about it for a minute and it made my day to hear him describing how much he liked that picture and how it really depicted Lost Hope to him. It made me want to burst into tears – tears of frustration, tears of disappoint, tears of happiness, and tears of gratitude.

I hurried over to him and tapped him on the shoulder to thank him and to let him know I took the picture. I told him that I was glad he liked it. He wanted to know how I came up with the name of the picture. I told him it just came to me when I had to enter a title when I was filling out the entry form. The picture looked like Lost Hope to me. I had taken another picture that showed the dolly’s missing leg in the raised flowerbed next to where the dolly was laying. I had also taken a bunch of pictures of lost binkys that I’ve come across while running, but none of them depicted the same level of despair as the lone dolly.

My photo, which I entered into the single photo, photojournalism class, had gotten through to someone and made an impression. That was the point. While winning would have been a nice acknowledgement of that, the point was to move someone, to touch them. I had done that. I thanked him and walked away elated; he had made my day.

Yes, you can’t win what you don’t enter, but even if you do enter a contest, you might find that there are other rewards than winning. I guess I needed to be reminded of that lesson!