Good Blood, Bad Blood

The forest elves ran ahead of me in the rain. Their umbrellas bloomed like colorful mushrooms upon their heads. I’d been gifted the opportunity to go solo with the grandkids on the afternoon of Veteran’s Day. Schools were closed, my wife was out of town, and my daughter-in-law had a lengthy errand to run. Could I help?

They arrived full of energy. We concocted a plan. A walk in the forest leading to the store. There, we would buy fixings for baking cookies.

The Indian Creek Trail meanders behind the houses on the east side of our neighborhood. It’s damp and leaf strewn this time of year. The tree canopy is thin but overcast skies shrouded us in half light tinged with mystery.

Sam is 7, a second grader. Savvy is 10 and in the fifth grade. Try as I might, I can’t recall much from my first, second, or third grades. The brain is developing, still growing, in fact. There’s only so much room. A child’s consciousness is fixated on the immediate wonder in their world. Early memories blur. The crucible of time erases so much.

By the fourth grade and certainly the fifth, my recollections of youth are more clear. I remember names and places and isolated events. They still resonate through the years, now, six decades or more later. Savvy, too, is likely building memories that may echo in her future. I hope to be among them.

Our activities on this Veteran’s Day were fun but not particularly memorable. However, it led me to recall a remarkable memory from my time as a fifth grader. One that made it into the safe deposit box of my 10^th year of life. The episode revolves around a friend, Greg Tourtelotte, and his pet spider.

Greg lived in the older part of town, a few streets north of me, on Hillcrest Court. I never learned what his parents did for work. Evidently, they encouraged him in the natural sciences. Greg had a curious, eccentric mind. He would later make a career as a biologist with the Idaho Fish and Game.

Science texts crowded his bookshelves at home. He collected insects. He showed me how to douse them with chloroform and pin their fragile thoraxes onto a cardboard display. He also had a thriving ant farm, garter snakes, and a pet tarantula. In fact, when we were fifth graders, he brought his spider to our elementary school for Show and Tell.

The day was wet. We were excused from class for morning recess. We hovered outside in the cold. The students clustered about Greg to look at his tarantula. It rested, safely ensconced in a gallon jar with air holes punched in the lid. Or … so we thought. Somehow, the lid was off and Mr. Spider, larger than our hands, black and hairy, was corralled between the fence posts of our spindly 5th grader legs, unpredictable as a nightmare.

I expect that the tarantula’s terror equaled ours and he did what spiders do in such situations: he ran. Eyes rolled, faces contorted, and voices shrieked. For the most part, though, our cohort of 10 and 11 year olds froze in place, pinned by fright as securely as the chloroformed insects in Greg’s collection at home.

More cringing occurred when the spider sought the first dark place it could find to hide, which was the inside of Greg’s pant leg. Up it scurried, leaving a discernible mole’s hump in its wake until Greg, with heroic poise, coaxed the tarantula back down to his shoe top. He cradled its abdomen in his fingers, then returned it to the jar and secured the top.

I don’t know how many cases of arachnophobia were born on that day, or, if anyone experienced a temporary loss of bladder control. What I do know is that it left an indelible impression on my 5^th grade mind. I recall other events from that school year, but none are as clearly etched into my memory bank. 

*******

Sam, Savvy, and I exited the forest. Sam complained. He was tired. Savvy, ever the big sister, mollified his displeasure. We promised a treat at the store. There, us boys set off to peruse the day’s donut offerings. Savvy collected the cookie fixings. We nibbled on eclairs and, refreshed, headed home in the drizzle.