We once had a poster competition in our fifth grade art class.

"You can win prizes," our teacher told us as she wrote the poster information on the blackboard. She passed out pieces of construction paper while continuing," The first prize is ten dollars. You just have to make sure that the words on the blackboard appear somewhere on your poster."

We studied the blackboard carefully. Some of us looked with one eye and held up certain colours against the blackboard to make an outline for their designs. Others twisted their hair around their fingers while deep in thought. We had plans for that ten-dollar prize, each and every one of us. "I'm going to spend mine on candies," one hopeful would say, while another practised looking serious, wise and rich.

Everyone in the class made a poster. Some of us used parts of those fancy paper napkins, while others used nothing but the coloured construction paper. Some of us would go past the good students' desks and then return to our own desks with a growing sense of hopelessness. It was an adult's trick. They seemed especially fond of making all of us believe we had a fair chance, and then always -always -giving prizes to the same old winners. .

I believe I drew a sailing boat, but I wasn't sure about that myself. I made it. I admired it. I determined it to be the very best of all of the posters I had seen, and then I turned it in.

Minutes passed. No one came along to give me the prize， and then someone distracted me, and I probably never would have thought about that poster again. I was still sitting at my desk, thinking nothing until the teacher gave me an envelope with ten dollars in it. Everyone in the class cheered for me.