When I was fifteen I was called to be the Junior Primary Pianist in our ward. It was pretty frightening, but it sure made me feel important. I'd been working in Primary for a couple of years already. When I was thirteen I was asked to help in the Sunbeam class. They were the three year olds, and there were about ten of them. Their teacher, Sister Shupe, was a sweetheart and the best teacher in the world, but even a great teacher has a hard time keeping a bunch of three-year-olds under control. I don't know if I made a difference, but I remember feeling pretty important being asked to work in Primary.
When I was called to play the piano I was scared silly. I'd been taking piano lessons for about eight years, so I suppose I was qualified, but I was got really nervous when I played in front of people, and accompanying the singing was hard. You couldn't just play at your own pace, or stop when you got mixed up and start over. I had to keep up with the conductor and the kids, and if I got mixed up or made a mistake I had to just keep on going.
Usually my fingers would get so sweaty they slipped off the keys during the prelude music, but by the time we got around to the opening song my nervousness would be replaced with concentration, and although I often made mistakes I learned to keep on going. Eventually I figured out that I could fake my way through a song, sometimes just playing the top hand if I had to, and as long as I kept up with the chorister the kids would keep singing and no one would even notice I wasn't playing all the notes. It was good experience for me.
It also made me feel important, special, and needed. For someone who was very shy and thought no one cared about me, it was awesome. Older women whom I looked up to and thought the world of now knew my name. They included me in their planning and talked to me like I was someone important. In fact, they liked me. It was so cool.
Most of these women had young families, and because they knew me they asked me to baby-sit for them. That was another good experience. I enjoyed babysitting, it made me feel grown up and responsible, and it was a great way to earn money. The little kids were cute, and I learned all kinds of tricks to stop babies from crying, children from fighting, and how to get wide awake kids to settle down and go to sleep. I especially learned how to tell stories.
It was easy to talk to children who were younger than me, unlike trying to think of things to say to people my own age. The kids I babysat for seemed to think I was interesting, nice, and cool. You have no idea how heady that is, especially for someone who felt naive, scared, and unimportant around teenagers.
I guess I was growing up without knowing it, and learning responsibility, dependability, and reliability, the characteristics of maturity, by being given the opportunity to develop them. Interesting.
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