Idyll Banter

by Chris Bohjalian

  And so Clark didn’t waste precious minutes leaving a message at Acker’s company and he certainly couldn’t count on a cellular phone in Lincoln. As Priscilla Presley and a forty-person film crew discovered two years ago, cell phones don’t work in our hills.

  Did Acker get Clark’s message quickly? You bet. Acker arrived at the store in search of a ham salad sandwich less than ten minutes after the local septic-tank czar had left a bulletin for him there.

  Yet the flurry of phone calls was not yet complete. Vaneasa would receive two more that would have nothing to do with such inventory staples as Slim Jims and Pepsi and crawlers.

  First, she was called by an out-of-state real estate agent she’d never met who wanted to know what properties might be for rent this winter in Lincoln. And then a Middlebury resident called in search of our town clerk, after mistaking the unique whistle and ding the phone makes in our town office for evidence the phone was out of order.

  Can you count on the Internet this way? Did we ever get this kind of mother’s milk from Ma Bell? Not a chance.

  Nope, if you really want to reach out and touch someone, you’re better off just calling the store.

  THE SCHOOL—

  PLAYGROUNDS AND

  CLASSROOMS

  DRAMA LIVES IN PRESCHOOL

  OZ ODYSSEY

  NEITHER BETHANY BARNER nor Victoria Brown is the sort of actress who enjoys discussing her craft. But as they await the curtain for the first performance of their new show, the dramatic difference in their approaches becomes clear.

  Four-year-old Victoria is a study in silent concentration. In the last seconds before she will walk onto the redwood deck that today is a stage, the only time she moves is when she methodically checks her props one last time.

  Wicker basket? Got it. Red sneakers that will serve today as my ruby slippers? Yup, still on my feet. Those ribbons that Mom put in my pigtails? Phew, still there.

  Five-year-old Bethany, on the other hand, is already deeply immersed in her role. She has become one with the little dog she will bring to life. She falls to her hands and knees and barks with great enthusiasm.

  “That’s what I’m going to say to the Wicked Witch,” she explains to the audience members as they take their seats on blankets in the grass.

  Certainly there are drama critics who fear for the future of the living theater, but I’m not among them.

  After all, I’m not a drama critic.

  Nevertheless, these days I still find myself waxing poetic and growing downright ebullient when I contemplate the future of the live stage play. Recently I saw that future in the form of the Lincoln Cooperative Preschool’s performance of The Wizard of Oz, and I was reassured that today’s young crop of actors and actresses brings a passion to their craft that will keep the theater vibrant and alive for a long time.

  Among the new faces to look for at, perhaps, the Royall Tyler Theatre in the year 2010:

  First there is five-year-old Steven Patterson. With tremendous sensitivity, Steven brought the deeply conflicted Scarecrow to life, especially in those moments when he was suddenly surrounded by five of the seven little girls who thought it was their turn to be Dorothy.

  Likewise, Bridgette Bartlett, four, demonstrated the sort of honesty in her performance in which the fine line between the world and the stage all but disappears. “I think I want to give my mommy a kiss,” she said soon after meeting the Tin Man, at which point she simply walked off the stage and into her mother’s lap and did just that.

  Three-year-old Cameron Skerritt Perta brought immense energy to the role of Flying Monkey (on and off the stage), and Alexandra Ackert-Smith (still a few weeks short of three), conveyed with elegance the despair of the witch as she melted.

  Ackert-Smith also made an excellent scary face on command.

  Viscaya Du Mond Wagner and Emily Wood were both equally reassuring good witches from the north, and worked well as a tag-team sort of Glinda.

  Of course, the performance needed multiple Glindas because there were so many different Dorothys. At one point, Viscaya and Emily were outnumbered four to two, and the witches had to work pretty darn fast to get all four girls back to Kansas.

  As an added bonus, the show was preceded by a rousing rendition of “I Am a Pizza” in both English and French, an appropriate opening number given the pizza’s wistful, Dorothy-like plea at the end of the song: “I am a pizza, please take me home.”

  Directed by outgoing preschool teacher Nancy Stevens, this version of Oz was particularly rich in improvisational flair. Sometimes a good witch just needs her mom, and that’s A-OK, and sometimes the Munchkins will be more difficult to herd than a litter of kittens.

  And that’s OK, too. Because Oz is a pretty magical place to begin with, and it can only become more enchanting when peopled by actors little more than three feet tall.

  IT’S NOT EASY TO BE A KID

  LAST MONTH I had the pleasure of serving as the company for an “unaccompanied minor” on a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Chicago. The minor was a ten-year-old boy on his way to catch up with his mom in Florida during his spring break from school, and we became pals soon after the flight attendant—a woman who had had her smile surgically removed at birth—pointed out his seat to him and commanded, “Read the safety card before we take off.”

  We bonded because I was willing to explain to him why Billy Bob Thornton was trying to blackmail Frances McDormand’s boss in The Man Who Wasn’t There, and he was willing to teach me how to draw the Pokémon character Pikachu.

  At first he had been mildly annoyed that the flight was showing a movie for grown-ups instead of one for children, but when I pointed out to him that he was the only child on the entire airplane, he saw the reasonableness of the airline’s decision to show a black-and-white Coen brothers film over Jimmy Neutron.

  Personally, I would have been content to watch Jimmy Neutron, too, but then I will watch anything while inside an airplane. I’d watch a two-hour infomercial about nose hair trimmers if it took my mind off the fact that I was hurtling through space at 500 mph, and there was nothing between me and the earth but 35,000 feet of air.

  In any case, I liked this young man a lot, especially because he understood the cardinal rules of flying in the modern age: Wear sneakers and travel with lots of snacks. In his knapsack he had pretzels covered in chocolate and pretzels covered in yogurt, Tootsie Rolls, Chex Party Mix, juice boxes, and three Twinkies. He was also willing to share his cache with me, even though I could offer nothing in return but a couple of Altoids and the antibacterial hand gel with which we could wash our hands when we were done.

  Incidentally, the sneakers matter because there seems to be a dramatically decreased likelihood that you will have to take your shoes off at security if you are wearing a pair of Converse low-tops (my traveling sneaker of choice) than if you are wearing black leather wing tips. There is nothing worse than being caught with your shoes off when it is announced that your flight has been canceled and you need to return to the counter to book a new one.

  The boy had spiked his hair with gobs of gel so that it looked like Needles National Park, and he had brought with him a series of toy skateboards the size of disposable razors. We spent a few minutes on the flight rolling the skateboards back and forth on his tray table and he showed me how to make them flip. This gave us both enormous satisfaction because the gentleman in the seat before him had insisted on putting his seat back so that the headrest was practically in the boy’s lap, and every time we flipped a skateboard we jostled the guy’s seat. (We had politely asked this fellow to put his seat forward, but he said he liked to recline and suggested that the boy move to any of the empty seats on the plane if it disturbed him to have a view of a strange man’s balding scalp.)

  In Chicago I changed planes, but the boy was going to remain on board because the flight continued on to Tampa, his eventual destination. When we were parting I wished him well and he said—seemingly out of the blue—that he hadn’t seen hi
s real father in almost two years.

  I nodded and wondered suddenly who had put him on the plane in Portland. Then I gave him my card.

  Sometimes, it’s very hard to be a kid.

  THE THRILL, THE STRESS, THE JOY

  OF THE RACE

  IN A SHORT RACE, a thousandth of a second can make all the difference: the difference between a fleeting but precious moment inside the winner’s circle, and a lifetime outside it, wondering . . . What if?

  And so, despite the fact that his first race is only minutes away, Steve Schubart decides his vehicle needs more weight. With a borrowed steel washer, Scotch tape, and a little faith, he and his race-day mechanic bring the car up to 140.7 grams—still a legal machine, but a weighty one.

  I ask him if the track looks fast this brisk March afternoon, but Schubart’s a veteran. “It’s the car that counts,” he says simply.

  A moment later, Schubart and his machine—a worker bee of a race car, an earth-tone, pine-colored rocket with more heart than hieroglyphics—are behind the starting peg.

  And then the races begin. In a series of head-to-head contests, Schubart’s car sizzles down the short course, dueling racers known throughout the circuit for speed. Guys like Mike Truchon, this year behind a dark red machine with lightning bolts on the hood so vivid you can sense the way the car will explode down the track. Or Brian Mayo, whose silver racer looks so powerful one spectator in the crowd murmurs approvingly, “Give that thing enough fuel and I’ll bet it goes into orbit.”

  Schubart will never know if the washer—a flat piece of metal roughly the size of a city subway token—made the difference. The races were close, two with Mayo so tight that not even the video cameras and stopwatches surrounding the finish line could determine a winner.

  But, in the end, Steve Schubart’s gritty car squeaked out a few key victories, and he took first place in the Webelo Den, and third place overall in Lincoln Cub Scout Pack 633’s Pinewood Derby.

  The March 23 race, held in Lincoln’s Burnham Hall, is a warm-up of sorts for the Cub Scout District’s annual Pinewood Derby in Middlebury on April 27. But just as the Olympic trials for many athletes can mean as much as one moment in time in Athens, Greece, or a year in the minors can mean as much as a week in what’s called the Major League Show, last Saturday’s Lincoln Derby was an emotional competition.

  Sportsmanship always won out over standings, but that doesn’t mean the races weren’t tense.

  The Cub Scouts, all six- to ten-year-olds, had taken identical blocks of nondescript pine and identical plastic wheels, and—perhaps with a little help from Mom or Dad—built their own deeply personal, highly idiosyncratic cars. Of the fifteen racing machines that graced the starting pegs, no two looked as if they were from the same automotive genus or species, or inspired by the same issue of Cub Scout Car and Driver. My personal favorite? Six-year-old Bryn Paul made the conscious decision to sacrifice aerodynamics for accuracy, and gave his car a Play-Doh and pipe-cleaner driver.

  And each boy brought to the Derby the hope that his car would speed over the thirty-two-foot maple track first and electrify the Burnham Hall crowd. “I love the Derby,” says Don Gale, whose son Schuyler is a part of the Pack’s Wolf Den. “It’s Thunder Road without the noise.”

  But each also brought a tremendous sense of camaraderie, the sort of friendship in which fairness mattered more than who finally won.

  In the Schubart/Mayo face-offs for the Webelo blue ribbon—two so close that a third was needed to determine the winner—it wasn’t one of the adult judges who finally awarded the victory to Steve Schubart.

  It was Brian Mayo. Even in that third race, Mayo’s and Schubart’s cars seemed to cross the finish line simultaneously, and the judges were about to insist on a fourth race. But with a voice as filled with enthusiasm as when he’d first entered the hall with his car and his hopes, Mayo called out the words that symbolized the spirit of the Derby:

  “Good race! Steve won!”

  ISAAC AND GUS SURVIVE GIRL WORLD

  ISAAC AND GUS have been to Girl World and back, and don’t seem any worse for the wear. Cassidy, too.

  And Dillon? Well, Dillon L’Heureux is only three, so he was happy just to be along for the ride.

  Isaac Prescott, Gus Yost, and Cassidy Kearns, however, are graybeards at four and five. They’ve been . . . socialized. They do . . . boy things. Things with trucks. And tractors. A stick is a sword; a fallen branch is a bazooka.

  Ah, but there they were at the Lincoln Cooperative Pre-school, at the wedding of the dog and the bear—a.k.a. Girl World.

  Last month’s ceremony was, without question, among the higher peaks of the alpine ridgeline that makes up the frenetic preschool social whirl here in Lincoln. One would never have guessed that it was only the second time that preschool teacher Kerry Malloy had coordinated the nuptials of a pair of stuffed animals. (The first, of course, occurred when Malloy was five.)

  It was also a study in just how different boys and girls are. Consider, for a moment, the preparations.

  The bride’s entourage began arriving at 8:30 in the morning, ninety minutes before the double-ring ceremony. Among the first to arrive was flower girl Bridgette Bartlett, five, wearing a snow-white satin gown with matching shoes. Right behind her was Savannah Mayo, also five, decked out in a hunter-green dress with a scooped neck and poufed ballroom sleeves.

  Meanwhile, the groom’s pals came in T-shirts and jeans. Briefly Isaac and Dillon had bow ties clipped to their collars, but they didn’t last long. As soon as the moms’ backs were turned, the bow ties were tossed away like roadkill.

  And while the girls immersed themselves in the massive amounts of costume jewelry and bridal accoutrements donated by a local bridal boutique . . . the boys hightailed it to the sand table, where Isaac ran the plow and Gus managed the crane. “We’re building a road,” Isaac explained earnestly.

  The big stuffed dog—the bride—had the ministrations of all the girls in the class. They clipped jewelry to her large, flouncy ears; they placed a veil upon her head. She wore faux pearls and opals and rhinestones. She was offered a gauzy blusher.

  But the bear, who was merely the lowly groom, was completely ignored by the boys. Finally, Kerry Malloy used a safety pin to attach a bow tie to his woolly neck.

  The two animals were formally wed by Nancy Stevens, a duly elected justice of the peace. There was a brief moment of gender confusion when she took the animals aside for their premarital consultation, since it is usually the men in this world who act like the dogs. But Stevens rallied, and started the service.

  First came the bride, escorted by my own four-year-old daughter, Grace (wearing an ankle-length ivory gown, rich with embroidered flowers and lace). Next came the groom, carried by young Cassidy Kearns, four.

  Grace carried the bride with the solemnity I’d expect her to show if she’d come across the Holy Grail in the nearby sandpit. Cassidy clutched the groom as if it were a giant, bloodsucking leech he’d found in a swamp.

  Now, I don’t mean to imply the boys were graceless. Cassidy certainly rallied, serenading the bride with an a cappella rendition of the Beatles classic “All You Need Is Love,” in which he made up for his lack of accompaniment with unfettered enthusiasm.

  And, momentarily, the boys and the girls were truly of one mind: When Stevens informed the bear and the dog they could kiss, Grace and Cassidy cautiously brought the stuffed snouts of the two animals together, and then dropped the creatures as if they were radioactive.

  Any way you look at it, however, it was a great event. Our planet is, in far too many ways, a man’s world. But for one brief and glorious instant this spring, the Lincoln preschoolers were able to glimpse . . . Girl World.

  INSPIRING TEACHERS MAKE EDUCATION WORTH EVERY PENNY

  I WAS NEVER scared of the principal when I was in elementary school. The cultural notion that the principal is a disciplinary ogre—an image that has filled children’s literature as diverse as Roald Dahl’s Matild
a and a good number of the Arthur books by Marc Brown—was not exactly lost on me, but it was always slightly foreign.

  The truth is, I don’t think any kids at Northeast Elementary School in Stamford, Connecticut, were scared of the principal when I was there in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

  I should be precise: Nobody was scared of the assistant principal. There might have been students frightened by the principal, though I’d wager that was largely because he had the intimidating two letters “Dr.” before his name.

  But the assistant principal—in my memory, at least, a heavyset man with a thick shock of hair that was just starting to gray and the sort of boxy eyeglasses that Hollywood always places on the Mission Control scientists in Gemini- and Apollo-era space movies—was always called Mr. D.

  Mr. D. was Joe Dinnan. And Joe Dinnan knew how to talk to children about the things that mattered to them with a knowledge that in hindsight can honestly be considered extraordinary. It was Mr. D. who recommended to me in the school library that I read Johnny Tremain in the third grade and then, two years later, remembered my interest in the Revolutionary War and suggested April Morning. It was Mr. D. who could mediate a dispute with the potential to grow ugly, a hallway debate in which one group of kids thought Don McLean’s “American Pie” was the best song ever written and another contingent was arguing with equal fervor it was the Jackson Five’s “I’ll Be There.”

  Mr. D. understood the fact that the New York Mets were in the World Series in 1969 was an event of legitimate historical importance, and we should be witness to it. He allowed my class to watch the game on television—yes, Virginia, once the World Series was actually played in daylight so children could see it, too—even though we were supposed to be learning fractions.