The Incubator

Easter is coming,

which reminds me of the first time I consciously lied by not saying a word.

It was 1961.

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In Mrs. Sherwood’s second grade class, I sit next to Peter Beaumont in the corner in the back where we can whisper and giggle and not get caught. My desk is next to the window sill where we planted beans in Dixie cups. Peter’s desk is partnered with mine directly in front of the incubator where we’re waiting to hatch eggs for Easter.

My favorite part of second grade is when we get out our blue American Singer books, and Mrs. Sherwood plays the piano that sits kitty corner to the blackboard.  So far we’ve learned “Oh, Susanna,” “America the Beautiful,” and “Frère Jacque.”

I’d say Peter is my best friend except he’s a boy, so on the playground I usually go hand over hand across the horizontal ladder or swing way high with Connie Withers while he plays basketball with Donny Sanborn. 

Connie and I are both Brownies and my mom and her mom are the troop leaders.  Connie is adopted like me, so she doesn’t look anything like her mom or dad who has grey hair like a grandpa. 

I’ve been over to play at Connie’s house a bunch of times and crawled down the ravine behind her house to the rocky brook at the bottom. We like to find wild cucumbers, blackberries, and teeny tiny hemlock cones, then bring them back to her porch to smush into stew.

Once it got cold, we played in front of her huge fireplace in the living room because her house is freezing. The walls are crooked and there are old beams that run across the low ceiling. On the other side of a steep staircase, is the dining room with a table big enough for all the girls in Mrs. Sherwood’s class to come to Connie’s birthday party. After she blew out her candles, we ate angel food cake with strawberry/van/choc ice cream, trying not to spill on our poufy dresses. Then we played Pin the Tail on the Donkey and had a treasure hunt around the rest of the house. At the end was a pint-sized bag for each of us holding peanut M&M’s, and a metal clicker that sounds like a cricket when you squeeze it.

On Brownie days Connie and I wear our light brown uniforms with big buttons down the front to school. My mom braids my hair in pigtails because the felt beanie doesn’t fit over a ponytail.  Mommy and Mrs. Wither’s uniforms are the color of a green bean. They meet our troop in the cafetorium after school.

Last fall we hiked the nature trail behind the school, and learned to identity oak, maple, and ash trees from their leaves then pressed them between pieces of wax paper.  We get badges for stuff like that to wear on our dark brown sashes. We went camping once and made s’mores by the campfire. Lying in my sleeping bag, I don’t know why, but I thought it would be cool to have Peter in a sleeping bag next to mine.

We’ve also learned the Girl Scout motto, to be clean in thought, word, and deed.

Which reminds me, when Mrs. Sherwood noticed the incubator was unplugged and asked who did it, I didn’t say it was Peter. Or that he did it as a joke, and we both laughed.

At the time, I didn’t understand that unplugging the incubator meant there would be no chicks for Easter.

I just remember our bean plants escaped their cups and overtook the window sill like a squiggly patch of weeds.  

Thanks to Gregory Hayes for the cover photo on Unsplash.