Andy has new sneakers. He holds one leg up so the kids seated at their desks can see the NIKE lettering better. It is Show and Tell time in my first-grade class. I believed Show and Tell was a worthwhile activity for a couple reasons. 1. It gave the children a chance to practice public speaking skills. 2. It gave them a chance to know each other better as they showed a special treasure they had brought from home or shared an experience they’d had the day before.
I called on one row at a time, and they could come to the front of the room if they had something to share. It was not compulsory.
Each speaker received polite attention. But one day, after each child shared, a comment came from a desk in the back of the room: Sarcastic and scornful, delivered in a monotone: “Whoopee.”
I ignored it, hoping that would end it, but after the third day of “Whoopees,” one little girl, proud of her new Tennis Barbie, recognized it as an insult. She sniffled and clutched her Barbie to her chest as she returned to her seat.
That was it. I had to put a stop to it. I knew where the voice came from, so in a private moment, I went over to David’s desk. “David, you have to stop saying Whoopee at show and tell time. The way you say it can hurt people’s feelings.” David, with sandy blonde hair and a round freckled face, as cute as any kid on a commercial, looked down at his desk top. “David, do you understand me?” He gave a curt nod.
David was going through a hard time, with his mom and dad in the midst of a divorce. They now had separate residences. When it was his mom’s turn to take him, David walked to the floral shop where she worked, a short distance from school. When his dad’s turn came, Dad would pick him up in his car. Both parents loved him and they handled it the best they could. But to David, the life he knew was crashing around him, making him angry with the whole world. The Whoopees stopped, but now his face reflected sadness and he didn’t interact with classmates as much as he had before.
One morning David came through the door with a stuffed backpack. He had brought something for Show and Tell! He shoved the backpack under his desk with a satisfied smirk on his face. The kids couldn’t wait to see what he brought. I could smell roses, so I had a clue that his mom had something to do with this.
When I called David’s row, he bent over, unzipped his back pack, and carefully pulled out a shoebox, with a lid on it. Those at the front of the classroom crowded around him. Those at their desks, tucked their knees under them and leaned forward to see better.
David slowly took the lid off the shoebox. I was right about the roses. Faded, but they still looked good. Some wilted lilies, bunches of slightly shriveled baby’s breath, two orchids with missing petals, and in the middle of this bouquet, lay. . . a dead robin.
All of us, including me, gasped with surprise. Our mouths gaped open and our eyes got wide.
David headed off any accusations. “I didn’t kill him. I found him under a tree.”
The robin looked peaceful enough, and even rather beautiful in the midst of all the flowers. After many Ooos and Ahhs, the students settled down. David, happy that his “Show and Tell” had been a success, put the lid back on the box, tucked the shoebox coffin into the backpack and returned to his seat.
School days are busy in elementary classrooms, and by noon everyone had forgotten about Show and Tell. By the end of the day no one noticed that David had left without his backpack. I didn’t notice. I had a dentist appointment at 4, and left shortly after the students.
The next morning, I went straight to my desk, and reviewed my lesson plans for a few minutes before the bell rang. I let the lined-up students in from the playground, and the next moment pandemonium broke out! All around David’s desk, students jumped and stamped and yelled. “Step on Them! Get ‘em. They’re bugs.” Screams from the girls merged with the yells from the boys.
I ran to David’s desk. On all sides, all over the floor, covering the backpack, hundreds of squirming, MAGGOTS moved in all directions! They must have hatched from eggs laid on the dead robin the day before. I’d never seen maggots except in photos. How could there be so many moving at such an incredible speed! I felt goose bumps going up the back of my arms.
STEP BACK!, I commanded the class. I ran to the door and never felt as glad in my life to see the custodian sweeping the hallway only two doors down.
“Bill,” I yelled, “Come quick. We need you.”
Bill donned his work gloves, grabbed his bucket and mop and a black plastic garbage bag to prepare for whatever emergency he might encounter. He’d seen everything: splintered window glass from a mis-thrown baseball, bloody fingers, and the inevitable little-kid puddles of vomit.
“Boys and girls,” I said to the students, “Step to the sides of the room. Mr. Allen is here.”
With professional expertise, Bill assessed the source immediately. He grabbed the backpack and tossed it into the garbage bag. He mopped the remaining black bodies, dead or alive, into the dustpan and dumped them into the bag. He exited the outside door and hurled all of it into the large lidded trash can near the playground fence.
“Thank you!”I said breathlessly, as Bill serenely returned to the hall to resume sweeping.
David accepted the situation and knew I would explain the missing backpack to his parents.
Time had come to start the reading groups. I scanned the floor by David’s desk, to be absolutely sure that none of those fast, creepy crawlers remained. “Whew!” I breathed in relief. Then I smiled to myself, “No, make that Whoopee!”
***
Lucy Bell, former writing consultant and published author, is inspired by James Baldwin who said: One writes out of one thing only—one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. Lucy mines her own experiences with a preference for the humorous. She is currently working on a collection of essays titled “Most of It Was Fun.”
