Failing Show and Tell

Some might say that second grade is

not too late to teach the skills of show

and tell; my case may be case-in-point:

I gathered nothing going to school

and thus had that to show; I told what

came to mind, and often that sufficed.

My brother and his bastard friend

advised me from fourth grade: walking

through the alley, empty-handed, they

saw my desperate need to have a thing

to show, and so they spied with me

a stone that, with imagination, glowed.

“It’s rare,” my brother said, “from Africa,

I’ve heard. When rubbed for hours

a certain way, it rivals gold”—with slang

and swears a ten-year-old conveys.

“They call it ‘rubbish’,” his friend straight-

faced. So I rehearsed that for my class.

My teacher didn’t find this funny, and

I was baffled twice as much for lack

of what the problem was. “It’s rubbish—

you’re supposed to rub it,” and I’d go

on that Africans—well, that would

have to be my brother’s piece to tell.

We slugged that out with pillows,

and he agreed that messing with my

education was not a laughing matter,

if ‘show and tell’ was dinosaured

by second grade. I asked him what

replaced, and he shrugged: “I can’t say.”

So when the neighbor’s Afghan hound

bit me on the head, and it happened on

another prep for show and tell before

my alley trek, I couldn’t say the audience

was second grade or—blast!—the nurse

who more than didn’t find this comical.

Long and short, they made their calls:

the dog pound seized the hound and

found it had no rabies, but also that

the gash behind my ear was grist

enough to call the creature quits. My

parents parried, but the cause was lost.

And now I wonder, years gone by, how

the neighbors judged my earnest show

and ad hoc tell; a million miles from

second grade (report cards disappear)

the luck that lacks some grace before

a random fall—and who recovers, after all.

DMVL