Minus One
by James Ebb Huggins, Jr.

A frustrated young runner at the Lake Bistineau O,
Ask me why the DQ? What made it so?
I told him not to worry, not to fret,
For a DQ at a Score O was not a good bet.

We went to the score board with all of it's strings,
And found his score card, and of all things,
Right on it there was a big red DQ,
And I knew I had lots of self esteem work to do.

We checked with calculations to see what was wrong.
They responded, "A -1 score was what caused the song,
For with a minus score, one could not stay in the race,
And with one that bad, he just could not keep up the pace".

I marked through the DQ, then checked his points,
And found an addition error, which livened his joints,
For low and behold there was a 10 point mistake,
His score now was +9, what a great break.

He was proud to have the +9 score you know,
But had one more concern he wanted to show,
Why had they put his card on the girls score board string?
Didn't they know the embarrassment it would bring?

I agreed, and put the card where it was supposed to be,
Right up there with the boys, for all to see,
No DQ, a +9, and all was good.
He had run the good race - just as he had hoped he would.
Back to Mother Bird 3