Despite all this, we clobbered the competition.

Graver: I’ve always assumed it was because I changed the ending, but maybe the newspaper had an editor with a dark sensibility and I would have won first place if I’d stuck to my original draft.  In the revised version, fairies swooped in a moment too late, as they had before, but then more fairies swooped in, a moment not too late.  It was dumb.  The title no longer worked, but I kept it anyway.  I didn’t like the new version of the story, but I won a prize, and I liked that.  Now I have a daughter in 3rd grade.  One day she came home from school saying that all stories need to have a problem and a solution, and I found myself saying (shrilly) No, there doesn’t have to be a solution; in life, there’s not always a solution!  Except in your life, I added pathetically. And your sister’s.

King: I cheated. My story had some sort of twist at the end, and though I made up my own characters and setting, I borrowed the twist from something I’d read. I think it’s possible that the whole class had read the story I plagiarized, for I can recall my feelings of shock and chagrin when the winning story was read aloud on Halloween day. I hadn’t bargained for that, and my classmates stared hatefully at me as it gradually became clear that a reprobate sat among them. I even wondered if the teacher had selected my story just to teach me a shaming lesson, for in those days I was still capable of attributing those kinds of motivations to adults.

Kirshenbaum: By default. In the fifth grade we auditioned for the school choir. It wasn't really an audition because  the choir was the fifth grade. There were two performances of the Winter Pageant. One in the afternoon right before Christmas vacation for the younger students, and one that night for the parents and the older kids. The first week of school,  the music teacher called us up, one at a time, to where she sat at the piano; we'd sing the first stanza of "Happy Birthday" and she then designated us "altos" or "sopranos." The whole raison d'etre of the fifth grade was the choir. The Winter Pageant was breathtakingly beautiful and now I was going to be in it, on stage, instead of part of the audience. Except when I sang "Happy Birthday," the music teacher––Miss Gilbert, her I remember––said, No. Neither alto nor soprano, I could not be part of the choir, I would throw everyone around me off-key, she explained. Choir practice was on Fridays mornings, at 11 a.m., and on that first Friday when everyone went to the Music Room, my teacher took me to the Art Room. There, the art teacher showed me how to fold the silver foiled paper into fourths and then again, and snip, snip, and behold! A snowflake.  Every Friday, for one hour, for three months, I made snowflakes.


––Who was your closest competition?

Beller: There was no direct competition.

Furst:  No one.  Our Dolphin lapped everybody.

Graver: The kids who won first and second place.

King: Some kid. I doubt there was anyone famous in my third grade class.

Kirshenbaum: I had no competition. I was the only fifth grader unable to carry a tune.