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#Post#: 98--------------------------------------------------
The loser who never gave up!
DIR By: Admin
Date: June 13, 2013, 12:36 am
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When he was a little boy his uncle called him “Sparky”, after a
comic-strip horse named Spark Plug. School was all but
impossible for Sparky.
He failed every subject in the eighth grade. He flunked physics
in high school, getting a grade of zero. He also flunked Latin,
algebra and English. And his record in sports wasn’t any better.
Though he did manage to make the school’s golf team, he promptly
lost the only important match of the season. Oh, there was a
consolation match; he lost that too.
Throughout his youth, Sparky was awkward socially. It wasn’t
that the other students disliked him; it’s just that no one
really cared all that much. In fact, Sparky was astonished if a
classmate ever said hello to him outside of school hours.
There’s no way to tell how he might have done at dating. He
never once asked a girl out in high school. He was too afraid of
being turned down… or perhaps laughed at. Sparky was a loser.
He, his classmates… everyone knew it. So he learned to live with
it. He made up his mind early that if things were meant to work
out, they would. Otherwise he would content himself with what
appeared to be his inevitable mediocrity.
One thing WAS important to Sparky, however — drawing. He was
proud of his artwork. No one else appreciated it. But that
didn’t seem to matter to him. In his senior year of high school,
he submitted some cartoons to the the yearbook. The editors
rejected the concept. Despite this brush-off, Sparky was
convinced of his ability. He even decided to become an artist.
So, after completing high school, Sparky wrote Walt Disney
Studios. They asked for samples of his artwork. Despite careful
preparation, it too was rejected. One more confirmation that he
was a loser.
But Sparky still didn’t give up. Instead, he decided to tell his
own life’s story in cartoons. The main character would be a
little boy who symbolized the perpetual loser and chronic
underachiever. You know him well. Because Sparky’s cartoon
character went on to become a cultural phenomenon of sorts.
People readily identified with this “lovable loser.” He reminded
people of the painful and embarrassing moments from their own
past, of their pain and their shared humanity. The character
soon became famous worldwide: “Charlie Brown.” And Sparky, the
boy whose many failures never kept him from trying, whose work
was rejected again and again,… is the highly successful
cartoonist Charles Schultz. His cartoon strip, “Peanuts,”
continues to inspire books, T-shirts and Christmas specials,
reminding us, as someone once commented, that life somehow finds
a way for all of us, even the losers.
Sparky’s story reminds us of a very important principle in life.
We all face difficulty and discouragement from time to time. We
also have a choice in how we handle it. If we’re persistent, if
we hold fast to our faith, if we continue to develop the unique
talents God has given us, who knows what can happen? We may end
up with an insight and an ability to inspire that comes only
through hardship. In the end, there are no “losers” with God.
Some winners just take longer to develop!
[right]By CAPT J. David Atwater, CHC, USN[/right]
HTML http://academictips.org/blogs/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/charles-schulz.jpeg
About Charles Schulz’s cartoon:
HTML http://academictips.org/blogs/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/Peanuts_gang.png
Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip
written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from
October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, continuing in reruns
afterward.
The strip is the most popular and influential in the history of
the comic strip, with 17,897 strips published in all, making it
“arguably the longest story ever told by one human being”,
according to Robert Thompson of Syracuse University. At its
peak, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of
355 million in 75 countries, and was translated into 21
languages.
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