I Think I Can

“Mom and I are going to a meeting at the church tomorrow night,” my father tells me. “Betsy Flood is coming to babysit.”

“What about Girl Scouts?” I ask.

“We can drop you off on our way to the meeting, but you’ll have to find your own ride home. Our meeting won’t be over until way after Scouts is done.”

“Can’t Betsy come and get me?”

“No, she just got her license a few weeks ago – I don’t want her driving you kids around. Besides, by the time Girl Scouts is over, the little guys will already be in bed.” 

I start to whine. “But we’re making bead bracelets this week! I don’t want to miss that!” Bead bracelets are all the rage with my nine year old peers.

“You don’t have to miss it,” says my father, “you just have to find someone to give you a ride home. Call Martha’s mom, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

“Can’t you call her?”

“I’d like you to do that yourself, Karen. The Trafton’s phone number is in the address book.”

“But I can’t!”

“Of course you can,” says my father. “You know how to use the phone. Just dial the number, and when someone picks up, say hello, this is Karen MacKenzie, may I please speak to Mrs. Trafton? And then when she gets on the line, ask her if she could please give you a ride home from Scouts.”

“But I’m too scared!”

“Scared? What are you scared of? Mrs. Trafton is perfectly nice.”

“I don’t know! I just can’t!” I don’t want to tell my father about the things that frighten me: What if I don’t dial the number correctly? What if I can’t remember what I’m supposed to say when someone answers? What if Mrs. Trafton says no? He won’t understand and he’ll think I’m a baby.

My father begins to grin in the terrible teasing way that I hate and I know what’s coming next. Sure enough, my father says: “I think I can, I think I can.” It’s a line from his favorite children’s book, The Little Engine That Could. He reads it to us constantly.

I think about how easy it would be for my father to call Mrs. Trafton. Part of me knows that he wants me to call her myself because it would be good for me to practice using the phone. But part of me knows that he won’t do it for me because he likes to see me squirm; he likes to have a reason to tease me with his constant refrain of “I think I can, I think I can.”

My father walks out of the room, bringing our conversation to an end. Then from down the hall, I hear the first words of The Little Engine That Could. We have a 45 rpm record of someone reading the book and I realize that my father has put it on the turntable in the living room and started playing it. I’m filled with rage and imagine marching into the living room and smashing the record to pieces. I don’t know if I could really do something like that. I’m the good girl, the one who never breaks the rules. But I hate that little engine with a furious passion.

I hate its confidence and its cheerful pluckiness. I hate how hard it tries and I hate its success. Most of all, I hate that engine because I know that its story is a lie. I try and try too, but unlike the little engine, I never succeed. I never win my father’s unqualified praise. There is always something I’ve done wrong, something I’ve missed, something he feels the need to criticize. He wants perfection and I can’t give it to him. I just can’t.