A... Is For Attitude

It is late afternoon, and Connie Kendall is losing a fight with her geography homework. Matching Asian countries to their capital cities is her idea of misery, so she flips on the television for background noise and lands in the middle of the Opera Geraldohue show. The guest is a smooth-talking author, Vincent Van Schpeele, who tells the audience that failing a test has nothing to do with how hard anyone studied. The real problem, he insists, is attitude. Believe in yourself, and success will follow. Connie decides the man is a genius, pushes her geography aside, and goes looking for his book instead.

The next day she turns in her midterm without a worry in the world and asks Mr. Kronholm to have a classmate drop the graded paper off at Whit's End on Saturday, since she will be out of town with her mother. On her way out she catches her friend Cheryl McCormick and hands her a flyer from the bulletin board: the Guy and Gal Glee Club is holding tryouts. Cheryl protests that she has never sung anywhere but in front of her bathroom mirror and has never had a single lesson. Connie tells her that lessons are beside the point. What Cheryl needs is attitude, and a slogan to chant: I can do it, I can sing, I can sing most anything. By the time Cheryl heads for the registrar's office, she is shouting it.

Connie tries the same medicine on the Odyssey Coyotes, who are stumbling through a last practice before Saturday's game. Jimmy Barclay is running the team as captain while Mr. Zachary coaches, and every player there expects to lose because the Coyotes have never won. Connie diagnoses a self-fulfilling prophecy, argues that all their practice has proven practice matters less than attitude, and then sinks a half-court shot on her first try. That settles it. The team starts chanting that they are winners. Afterward Peter Dillon hangs back to admit, privately, that he is terrified of high places - so afraid that he walks down into Miller's Ravine every morning rather than cross the train trestle like everyone else. Connie gives him a chant of his own and hurries off, never hearing him decide where he is going to test it.

Saturday brings the bill. At Whit's End, Connie announces she has earned an A she has not actually seen yet, and John Avery Whittaker tells her plainly that no attitude on earth produces a grade. She marches him to the school to watch Cheryl audition, and Cheryl, chanting bravely, sings badly enough that Mr. Bryant thanks her and moves on. Cheryl will not speak to Connie afterward. Whit points out gently that ability, not belief, was the missing piece. Down in the gym the Coyotes lose 56 to 12, and Coach Zachary reports that Ben spent the afternoon firing passes to Jimmy, who was sitting on the bench. The team had spirit, he says, and no skill at all. Monday they will work on skill.

That is when Connie remembers Peter. She and Whit race to Miller's Ravine and find him frozen flat on the tracks in the middle of the trestle, unable to move forward or back. Whit sends Connie to wait for the police and starts out across the ties, talking Peter to his feet just as a train comes around the bend. Connie prays. The two of them jump clear with the whistle screaming over them, and Whit tells a shaking Peter that yes, they are very much alive.

Back at the shop, Connie admits she was taken in. Whit tells her that a good attitude and healthy self-esteem are fine things as long as she remembers where they come from, and that the wisest response to any new philosophy is to open the Bible and see what it says. Then he hands her the mail that arrived while they were gone. Connie opens her geography midterm and finds a D. Whit suggests she look on the bright side: she may have earned a D in geography, but she certainly got an A for attitude.