Walk This Way

Connie Kendall is in a money pinch: her furnace has quit working, and paying her mortgage next week will empty her bank account. Her friend Penny bursts in with a solution - the Miss Odyssey pageant and its five-thousand-dollar cash prize. Connie wants nothing to do with pageants, which she pictures as plastic smiles and spray tans, but Penny and Wooton point out that the flyer calls for a role model of grace, beauty, and intelligence, and that all she has to do is walk across a stage in a gown, perform a talent, and answer one interview question. Connie gives in, and the friends divide up the coaching: Penny will handle poise and wardrobe, Wooton will handle the talent, and Eugene - once he stops laughing - agrees to prepare her for the interview question, treating the whole thing as an intriguing social experiment.

Training does not go smoothly. Penny puts Connie in a sparkly purple gown and wobbly high heels and tries to teach her a proper pageant walk, telling her, "You sound like a horse tap dancing to a country western tune." She shares a memorized poem from a pigeon-toed pageant contestant she once knew - face forward, long stride, hands relaxed, smile on - but Connie still topples off her heels. Wooton's first idea, a flaming baton routine, ends with the fire department putting out Connie's siding and begonia bushes, so he switches to the xylophone, an instrument Connie has never played. His motto is "When in doubt, remember Aunt Hilda," after the aunt who bravely filled in on xylophone at his parents' wedding. Meanwhile Eugene drills Connie with a spreadsheet of common pageant questions and a buzzer, zapping her every time she starts an answer with "well" or "I think," and urging her to imagine herself as a modern-day Marie Curie.

At the dress rehearsal, Penny notices something worrisome: Connie keeps drifting away from practice to help people. She has made friends with the other contestants, fetches water for a girl who looks sick with nerves, and lends Wooton's baton to a contestant who forgot hers. On the day of the pageant she shows up late with a leg cramp because she stopped to change a flat tire - in high heels - for a contestant named Beth who is going through a hard time. Penny begs her to focus, warning that thousands of people will be watching and comparing her.

To everyone's delight, Connie shines. Her evening-gown walk lands her in the top three, and she plays her xylophone piece with such soul that Wooton tears up. Only the interview question remains, and her friends are confident, since talking is what Connie does best. But her question - what should be done about the twenty percent of Americans who cannot identify the nation's capital - is not on Eugene's list. Connie freezes under the bright lights, and all her coaching tumbles out in a jumble about making long strides toward childhood obesity, space travel, and winning first place, ending with a bewildered "Amen."

Mortified, Connie hides in a supply closet, where Penny finds her by following the trail of purple sequins. Penny apologizes for pressuring her and tells her the truth she realized while watching her: Connie is better than poised and perfect. She is compassionate, generous, and helpful - the kind of person who changes a competitor's tire and lends a rival a baton. She is a real role model, Penny says, because "You act like Jesus."

Then Wooton and Eugene arrive with urgent news. Connie hasn't won Miss Odyssey - Eugene admits her interview earned a score no one had ever seen before, a negative one - but the other contestants have voted her Miss Congeniality, the most likable contestant of all. They have been raving about her kindness, including the moment she performed the Heimlich maneuver on a girl choking on a crab puff at the contestants' dinner. Best of all, the award comes with a three-thousand-dollar prize. Connie hurries back to the stage, where her name is announced to warm applause.