Teacher's Corner - Stories
I failed drawing and made a travesty out of projects that required scotch tape or glue. Miss Densmore, my seventh grade science teacher, did not tolerate this shortcoming. She looked right at me when announcing the science fair and said, “If you can’t climb up the mountain then go around it. Just get started.” So when my young friend Charlie bounced through the door recently, looking like he won the lottery, the last thing I expected him to say was, “I have to build a volcano.” Building a volcano never has put a smile on my face. I might have contracted moping mumps and postponed research till the spring thaw. Not so for my 14-year-old accomplice. He finds materials, salvages boxes from the recycle, designs removable parts to demonstrate the before and after life of Mt. St. Helens. Charlie asks about my school science projects. We are good companions. He likes to know things and I have a million stories. Charlie cuts cardboard triangles into a semicircle and I tell him about Mrs. Densmore’s science fair. Nugent Lemon and I were on the solar system team. She was supposed to draw it, I was supposed to build it. I began with the unused motor stolen from brother’s erector set and the idea of planets circling the sun. I made nine spheres out of modeling clay and wanted to attach them in concentric circles connected to the motor. All the orbits had to rotate at the same speed like a carousel standing upright. I kicked around the Lemon’s garage hoping inspiration hit, like it hit Mr. Lemon when he hummed at his work bench. One afternoon, soft-spoken Mr. Lemon found me pulling coat hangers apart and soldering them into circles—with his soldering gun that I borrowed. He leaned up next to their 1959 Ford Fairlane and watched me bumble with my coat hanger contraptions. “Wants some help?” he asked with a smile and I did. He told me about welding different kinds of metal and volunteered to get wire that worked better than confiscated coat hangers. Charlie listens and tapes little cardboard feet to the bottom of a box top. This stage of the mountain looks like standing ribs in a crown roast. We discuss dry ice, smoke machines, other special effects to simulate destruction. And how to move the cardboard model from the dining room table to the classroom. I tell him that the day we moved the solar system it was a near disaster. Venus crumbled, Neptune’s gravitational wire collapsed and Pluto rolled under a car seat. Nugent and I developed an instant rash when Saturn’s ring capsized. “Did you save it?” Charlie asks I tell him Mr. Lemon saved the solar system, even got us to school on time to set it up. And the most amazing part of the whole thing, the most unpredicted part was that we came in third place. Got my first and only ribbon. I was stunned that we won out over Dixie Kaufman’s ant farm or Donny Jo’s steam engine. I assumed Nugent’s great poster board illustrations captured the ribbon. It certainly wasn’t my wobbly model with the dinky motor. One weekend, when I was home from college, I ran into Mrs. Densmore and I asked her why we did so well. Charlie mixes glue in Tupperware and we shred newspaper for paper mache. "How come?" he asks, “How come you got the ribbon?” I tell him what the old science teacher told me: they had never had girls build anything with a soldering gun or a motor. It was unheard of at the time. The judges awarded our intentions more than our execution. Charlie smiles and tells me nobody solders or welds anymore. Girls build cabinets in class just like boys but nobody does mechanics. Nobody draws poster boards either. Charlie’s teammates will illustrate Washington State’s most famous eruption in an iMac multimedia presentation. I have no idea what he is learning about volcanoes or what I learned about the solar system. I am sure it all folds into his memory and one day he will tell a story quite different than anything the teacher had in mind. We take the white gunk strips in hand and begin at the foot of the mountain. Auntmama |
The Volcano
