By Myrica Hawker


Nearly everyone has had the opportunity to learn one especially difficult and important lesson in life, one that sticks out in your mind because it pokes your emotions like a ball wrapped in barbed-wire rolling around every time you think about it. And this lesson, for whatever reason, impacts almost all future decisions until the end of time.

For some people, these lessons are bigger than for others. For Richard Nixon, this lesson may have been to not illegally spy on the opposing political party if you like being president of the United States. For young Beaver Cleaver, this lesson may have been the meaning of the word "fiancee" . . . which for him meant the end of his dream of marrying his pretty, young teacher Miss Landers with her engagement to another man. For Jessica Simpson, this lesson may have been that if you don't know buffalo wings are chicken and not really buffalo or "Chicken of the Sea" is really tuna fish and not chicken, then having a tell-all TV show about your life might not be the best idea -- unless you enjoy being called a ditz in all forms of national media.

For me? Well, my lesson wasn't quite as consequential, embarrassing or in the national spotlight. My hard-earned lesson came in the first grade. I lived in Pleasant View, Utah, and a few months before my birthday, some amazing water slides were added to the nearby mall in Ogden. Now these water slides weren't just any water slides. No. 1: they were translucent, completely enclosed tubes, which means they are mostly dark inside with just enough light filtering in to prevent fear, but they are still dark enough you feel you are in your own little world. No. 2: these slides were IN THE MALL. Who would have ever thought water slides could be put INSIDE a building? No. 3: the slides actually looped through the exterior wall of the mall so when traveling down the slide you exited and re-entered the mall for everyone outside to see. For a 6-year-old, this was the coolest concept since a playground inside a restaurant.

I had great and wonderful plans to take my friends to these water slides for my seventh birthday. Well, as luck would have it, just before my birthday, the slides were shut down -- and since I was waiting for my birthday, I never even got to go on them!

Well, I chose to lament this sad little story in some paper assigned by my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Swenson. And being the great young writer that I was, I told the whole dramatic story from my months of eager anticipation to my ultimate crushing disappointment.

When the teacher handed back the paper, her comments didn't include the heart-felt sympathy I expected, but rather her tidbits of worldly wisdom that would forever be burned upon my brain. Written atop my paper was the cliché, "Don't count your chickens before they hatch."

Granted, this may not be as embarrassing as Richard Nixon's, Beaver Cleaver's or Jessica Simpson's little lessons, but to this day I hardly even let myself anticipate anything good happening to me, and if I do have some exciting adventure planned, I sure can't tell anybody for fear it will fall through and some well-meaning person will crush my hopes and dreams with those seven little words.