What I mean is when I go to edit the templates where I want to place the code avatar to make the avatar show....

so will that code you just gave me help?
thank you for all of your assistance!

If you are going to be adding an avatar where none currently exists, you are going to need to look at the API like I said. In fact, once you find the functions in there regarding getting the avatar, you should then do a search through the php files and look to see how it has been used before. You will then need that code if you try to use an avatar and the avatar isn't already available for use - probably several plugins are in your future.