Not Giving Up What You Want Because You Fear Judgment

Not Giving Up What You Want Because You Fear Judgment links Lucy’s counsel to Willowdean Dickson’s eventual decision to enter Clover City’s Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant. Its force comes from the difference between being unable to do something and having learned to rule it out before trying. Lucy once helped Willowdean cross that line at a dance class; later, Willowdean recognizes how often Lucy had not been given the same chance, and chooses not to let fear make her own decision for her.

Lucy’s Lesson in Taking the Chance

When Willowdean was in third grade, Lucy took her to her first dance class. Willowdean felt conspicuous in a leotard that barely stretched over her belly and thighs, and compared herself with the other girls waiting to enter. She refused to get out of the car. Rather than insist that she go inside, Lucy joined her in the backseat, tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and handed her a tissue. The gesture meets Willowdean’s immediate distress with tenderness, not a demand that she stop feeling it.

Lucy then described the time she had lost by imagining what other people might say or think. That fear had sometimes kept her from ordinary errands, but had also stopped her from attempting things she considered special. She tells Willowdean that she need not commit to dance forever: she can go in, decide it is not for her, and never return. The essential obligation is simply to give herself the chance. The advice makes courage compatible with changing one’s mind; trying is not a promise to keep going, and refusing to try should not be mistaken for a freely made choice.

Willowdean stayed with dance only through the fall. The short duration does not undo Lucy’s encouragement: the point was not to turn one class into a success story or to prove that Willowdean could fit in. It was to let her enter and discover what she thought for herself. Lucy’s lesson therefore concerns agency more than achievement. A chance has value even when it does not lead to lasting participation.

Lucy’s Unlived Possibilities

The lesson gains a more painful dimension through Lucy’s unrealized plans. Mrs. Dryver, Ellen Dryver’s mother, won two airline tickets at work and immediately offered one to Lucy so they could visit Dollywood, a place Lucy had long wanted to see. The friends planned the trip, researched hotels and rental cars, and drove three hours to the nearest airport. There, they learned Lucy would have to buy an extra seat because she could not fit in one airplane seat.

The airline was kind but firm. Lucy felt too mortified to take up two seats and went home instead. Mrs. Dryver later brought her a Dollywood Christmas ornament, a white iridescent globe with red lips and Dolly Parton’s signature, suspended from a red velvet ribbon rather than a metal hook. The ornament preserves both the friendship’s generosity and the trip that never happened. Lucy had not simply failed to want an adventure; a practical restriction met her body, and the shame surrounding that restriction helped turn the journey into something she could not bear to attempt. The principle does not erase that barrier or blame Lucy for encountering it. It makes visible how exclusion and anticipated judgment can combine to narrow a life.

Looking back, Willowdean thinks of all the things Lucy never did, not because she was incapable of wanting them, but because she told herself she could not and no one encouraged her to believe otherwise. Willowdean acknowledges that Lucy’s health had declined in her last years; she does not claim that fear explains everything or that Lucy would certainly have entered a pageant. Indeed, she doubts that the pageant itself was Lucy’s great ambition. What troubles her is the possibility that Lucy would have denied herself the choice even if she had wanted it. The difference between a wish and an abandoned possibility becomes the inheritance Willowdean must reckon with.

From Memory to a Decision

The 1994 pageant registration form gives Willowdean a concrete way to test what she has learned. Its questions about height, weight, hair and eye color, ambition, and talent make the body and self-presentation conspicuous; at the same time, its basic eligibility rules seem simpler than the many unwritten barriers Willowdean had imagined. The form first prompts her to picture Lucy’s handwriting, then sends her back to the question of what a person might attempt. She puts it away at first, and later finds herself looking at it again rather than concentrating on her required reading.

Her decision does not arrive as a clean, confident rejection of insecurity. Willowdean considers backing out of a difficult conversation with Ellen Dryver and could instead talk about Bo, whom part of her still cannot let go. She calls Ellen and tells her she is entering the pageant. The pause on the line is long enough for Willowdean to imagine retracting the announcement; Ellen’s enthusiastic response turns the vulnerable disclosure into a moment of connection. The call matters because Willowdean acts while uncertainty is still present, rather than waiting to feel immune to embarrassment.

Choosing for Herself, Not as a Symbol

When Willowdean discusses entering with Millie Michalchuk and Amanda Lumbard, she admits that she had wanted to keep the decision quiet. Their involvement makes secrecy difficult, but her explanation also guards against a different kind of judgment: she does not want to be cast as a champion or savior for other girls. She says she is entering for Lucy and for herself, wants to return to the version of herself she was before Bo, and wants to cross the line she feels between herself and the rest of the world. Her purpose is participation, not representing everyone or rescuing them.

That distinction keeps the principle personal without making it merely private. Willowdean’s choice answers the legacy of Lucy’s self-denial, but it does not claim to repair the barriers Lucy encountered or to make the pageant’s standards harmless. It refuses the assumption that a person must first be certain of belonging before stepping forward. When Willowdean calls the decision a bad idea, Millie answers that her favorite things begin that way. The exchange leaves fear intact, but no longer gives fear the final authority: the possibility of judgment remains, while the choice to try belongs to Willowdean.