Burying talents

As I was flipping through the pages of an old book, I came across a scrap of paper.  It was worn and kind of yellowed.  I unfolded it and read the words printed on it :  “Clean the catsup off the main hall wall — Shirley.”

I suddenly found myself standing next to the lunchroom in Pope High School. It was the fall of 1991 and next to me was my barrel with a copy of my college diploma on it.  Marshall Ramsey, Custodian first class, was reporting for duty.

I thought it was the worst moment of my life.

Yes, I was hosting the  mother of all pity parties.  And it wasn’t fun.  (although I did bring snacks). I had just graduated from the University of Tennessee with honors and lots of awards for my cartooning.  The whole world was ahead of me.  And that world didn’t include cleaning toilets and tile floors.

I worked with good people.  Very good people. In fact, most of the faculty believed in me more that I did.  That was on my side.  My friend Luke, science teacher and world-class cross-country coach, provided words of wisdom. Not that I was smart enough to listen early on — but he was there.  I can still see the tile floors in his classroom twenty years later.  (I cleaned lots of tile — it’s my strongest memory.) I also worked with Maggie, a funny lady who had to go back to work after her husband lost his job during the Eastern Airlines strike. She wasn’t where she wanted to be either.  I admired her work ethic and sense of humor.

My main responsibility was to clean several tile classrooms and the 400 hall bathrooms.  I worked from 2:30 until 11 each night. There were many nights that Maggie could hear me swearing as I unstopped yet another toilet.  I came to work mad and left my ego at home.  Six grumpy months quickly passed.

One Sunday, I went to church (a good place to go when you are having a pity party) .  The preacher was doing a sermon on the Parable of the Talents. I came to the part that jumped off the page and smacked me up the side of the head:

He also who had received the one talent came and said, “Lord, I knew you that you are a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter. I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the earth. Behold, you have what is yours.”

But his lord answered him, “You wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I didn’t sow, and gather where I didn’t scatter. You ought therefore to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received back my own with interest. Take away therefore the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will be given, and he will have abundance, but from him who doesn’t have, even that which he has will be taken away. Throw out the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

— Matthew 25:24–30

I was stunned.  Gnashing of teeth?  God obviously wasn’t thrilled with people who wasted their gifts. I realized I was reading about me. It was very hard truth to read.  I had quit drawing. I was burying my talent.  Stunned, I went home and rethought my life.  And I  got busy. I got to work.

My attitude changed the very next day. I began drawing caricatures of the teachers’ husbands.  I did t-shirts for Luke’s cross country teams. I even did cartoons for the school paper. I took at painting class at Kennesaw College.  One of my cartoons hung in the library for years (it may be still there, although I don’t know.)  I smiled.  I took control of my talent and then my destiny.

A few months later, an assistant principal had a friend who was an editor at a local newspaper.  My good attitude and my obvious talent earned me an interview.  The rest is, well history.  Within three years, I was the editorial cartoonist at Mississippi’s state newspaper.  A few years later, I was a two-time Pulitzer finalist.  Today my cartoons appear in hundreds of papers. I’ve illustrated several bestselling books and now host a statewide radio show. I speak all over the Southeast to audiences.  I tell them the importance of not burying their talents.

I run at Pope every once in a while.  It’s how I stay grounded.  As I puff around the track, I remember cleaning the toilet that is just a few yards away.  I think about my friends who I worked with there. My friends who believed in me.  I think about the pity party I once threw.  I think about Maggie.

Oh, remember when I said that I thought it was the worst time of my life.  Let’s just say that the worst times of your life can turn into your best. Maggie set me up with her only daughter Amy.  And lovely Amy is the love of my life and the mother of my three boys.

Maggie is now my mother-in-law.

Twenty years later, life is throwing me some new curveballs.  As I look at that scrap of paper instructing me to clean the catsup off the main hall wall, I remember that the solution to any problem I have is simple: Don’t bury my talents. Get to work. And what I think is the worst moment of my life will turn out to be my greatest.