Two poor friends, Sam and Sid were walking down the street when they noticed a poster announcing : "Open Talent Hunt - Showcase your Uniqueness, Get Rich!"
Sam felt pumped and immediately wanted to sign up for it.
He asked Sid " C'mon man! Lets go for it!"
Sid asked "What if we don't win?"
Sam replied sarcastically "Urm... we lose? Aw man so what if we lose, we get to have fun!"
Sid said "Hey we don't know who the judges are or what sort of talent they expect; and besides the competition is this weekend! We won't even be prepared well! I don't even think I have any talent"
Sam said " Fine, do as you please, I'm gonna sign up! "
Sam decided to sing his favorite song "Stitches" and Sid helped him prepare.
"Stitches" was a special song for Sam, because it was the one lasting memory he had of his mother, apart from her guitar, which she had given to him in her last days. Sam had been adopted since by Sid's father, and although the man loved his kids to bits, he was just another working class guy who could hardly make a square meal a day. Often, Sid and Sam would work odd jobs to help keep up the roof over their heads. Now though, the roof was in danger of flying off, given the intensity of Sam's voice and the tune of his well oiled guitar.
Many times over their short practice sessions, Sam's guitar strings would pop off unexpectedly and Sid would immediately fix them up, using his bare hands, without hurting his fingers over the wires!
But during one of these sessions, the wires flew right off of the guitar and couldn't be fixed. And their lack of money or tools to fix the guitar stared right at their face.
Sid was determined to help his friend do his best, and so, he held the wires over the guitar with just the right amount of pressure such that Sam could still play on the guitar but Sid wasn't pressing the guitar against Sam's body.
Sid's agility, strength and uncanny deftness at stretching wires with his bare fingers without hurting himself increased dramatically to an extent where Sam and he could just play on as a team!
The weekend soon came for the contest. Sam felt nervous and was comforted by the chilled out Sid. Sid went to see the calling order on the notice board and stared in shock when he saw both of their names under one team! "Team Jammers: Sid and Sam"
He ran at once to Sam and saw him smiling wickedly at him. "Dude! How could you do this! What if you fail because of me! God! Who in their right mind would put me as their team member?! I'm useless dude! Okay I'm gonna ask the organizers to change it to just Sam!"
Sam, with the same wicked smile, told Sid, "Ahem.. you do realise that you're holding the guitar strings for me right?"
A terrified Sid was close to tears. He had no choice but to accompany Sam to the stage.
And they performed their extraordinary performance.
The audience and judges were over the moon!
Never had they seen such a unique show!
A guy singing with a broken guitar whose strings were held together by the bare hands of the other guy?!
Soon they announced the winners of the show and although The Jammers hadn't won, they got a special mention from the judges, who agreed to gift them a sizeable cheque and kindly offered to replace Sam's guitar with a new one.
Although he was happy to have gotten a prize amount, Sid felt terrible. He blamed himself for their failure to win and told Sam, "I'm so sorry I didn't ask the organisers to remove my name! I told ya we wouldn't win!"
Sam replied: "When we were on stage, did the crowd boo at us? Did the judges hate us? They didn't pick us because we were not the talent they expected! That doesn't mean that we aren't talented!
We didn't fail or lose Sid! We won the moment you agreed to come with me on stage. We won over your fear of failure!"
And so they had😊