"Mistress Mary quite Contrary"

"In order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain." -Mark Twain "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" ch2

Why do most humans want things that are hard to get? Why is it important to some people to win marathons, and The Olympics? Someone will spend their whole life training and working towards winning a gold medal at the Olympics, when most of them never will win that gold medal. Why do people work so hard to do this? What is the point? It's just a medal? I think that it is because it is hard, it is "difficult to obtain". Not anyone can go and win a gold medal, a medal that means you are the best in world in high jump, or shot put, or whatever. Tom Sawyer tricks all of his friends into whitewashing the fence. Not only does he not have to work but they pay him so that they can work all because he made the idea of white washing the fence desirable.

I wanted to go on the cross country trip with the Davis High Cross Country team. When I asked my parents if I could they absolutely refused. I begged, and begged. The more they told me that I couldn't go the more I wanted to go. Finally my dad gave in and said that I could go on the trip under one condition: I had to pay for it all by myself. The trip cost a little under 200 dollars, and without help from mom and dad it would be hard to come up with the money. I looked my dad strait in the eye and said, "well dad, it looks like I'm gonna be doing a lot of babysitting." My parents did not expect me to go. They were just shutting me up, they were sick of my constant nagging. They thought that if I had to pay it all by myself that I would soon give up. This made me want to prove them wrong! If they had told me that they really wanted me to go, and that they would pay half, I probably wouldn't have gone because I wouldn't have had the desire to go.

I had 80 dollars that I had been saving to go shopping for clothes that I didn't really need anyway, that went toward the down payment. The team did a fund raiser where we all ran on the track for a whole hour. We were supposed to ask everyone if they would donate a certain amount of money for every mile we ran. Candace and I only asked them to donate to the Davis High Cross Country team. We weren’t selling anything we just asked them to donate. A lot of people were so happy that we weren’t selling anything. They would say to me "I have 7 things of cookie dough in my fridge! I am so glad that you are not selling anything." Anyway we collected 220 dollars, all in about 3 hours! 100 of it was from this old rich guy in my ward that I had never met before. It was so cool, he reached into his wallet and pulled out a hundred dollar bill, and asked me if that would be enough. Candace and I split the money, and we only got 75% of it but that was another 80 dollars. I earned the rest of the money babysitting, and doing odd jobs around the house. Then I went to California, and it was a blast! The night before I went my mom said to me, "I didn't think you could do it but you did." Then she said, "I think that you could do almost anything if you wanted it enough." I think this is true. Anyone could do almost anything if they wanted it bad enough. It is so stupid I wanted to go on that trip so bad only because my parents didn't want me to. I guess that’s human nature.