DALE

The church that my family attended while I was growing up in Vermont was a one-room church up in the hills. It had creaky wood floors, creakier pews, and because there was no running water the only bathroom was an evil smelling outhouse. The church itself had thin walls and a high ceiling so the heater couldn’t keep up with the cold in the wintertime. I remember Sunday services when nobody took off their coats or hats, and we could see the preacher’s breath as he gave the message. The Pastor, Glen Bingham, was one of the last of the circuit riders. He had multiple churches and every Sunday he would preach at each one in turn. Then after the service he would run out the door to get to the next one.

In the winter time Pastor Bingham wore a huge fur hat. It was the sort somebody in Siberia might wear- outlandishly furry and with ear flaps tied up. When he would clomp into the church on Sundays he would put his hat and jacket on a table in the back directly behind where I sat.

I was just a boy then, and so I often had little toys in my pockets. On one particular Sunday I had brought along a small, plastic figurine of Dale from the chipmunk duo, Chip and Dale, and the idea came to me that it would be a fun experiment to see if I could secret Dale behind one of Pastor Bingham’s ear flaps on one Sunday and see if it would come back to me the next. So when the pastor wasn’t looking, I snuck Dale under one of the ear flaps on his hat. I can remember watching with nervous curiosity as he put the hat on. He didn’t seem to notice the stowaway.

All that week I wondered about Dale. "What if he puts the ear flaps down?"

But when the next Sunday rolled around I snaked my finger in behind the warm furry ear flap and produced Dale...my brave intrepid traveler. He made it!!!

OUT ALL NIGHT

In the summer of 1999 I rented a room on La Rue Paradis in Quebec City while I was studying French at nearby L'Universite Laval. It was a nice enough room I guess. There was a bed, a table and a metal folding chair. There was no dresser, but between the shelf in the closet and my suitcase I got along okay. The room was spartanly furnished to be sure, but I didn't mind. It was situated in the basement of a house along with three other rented rooms, and was accessed by a private entrance in the back. Upon arrival an elderly woman showed me to my room. She led me along the side of the house and through a wrought-iron gate into a backyard which was almost entirely covered in old stone pavers. Moss had grown up between the pavers, and it sticks out in my memory as the most aesthetically appealing thing about the house. I remember descending a dark stairwell which brought us out into a small, dingey looking lounge/kitchen area. Four rooms were located off of the lounge. One belonged to me. My immediate neighbor would prove to be a man named Bruno Routier, who owned a convenience store down the street. He owned his own home, which was located nearby, but it was being remodeled and repainted during the summer of 1999 so he too had taken a room in the basement. He was the only occupant of the basement who was not a student at the University. The other two rooms were occupied by Francoise and Nicole. Francoise was from Quebec. Nicole was from Toronto. What they studied, or what they were like, I don't know. Nicole, slightly overweight with red hair and a freckly face, ignored me entirely. In fact, I hardly ever even saw her. Francoise, thin with dark hair and a penchant for tank tops and skinny jeans, was local and spoke no english. A constant parade of friends and family were always popping in on her, but to a man they all acted as though I was not there. It was strange. The only conversation I recall having with Francoise had to do with a mouse she had seen in her room. She apparently hated mice and was concerned that the dirty dishes being left in the sink were attracting them. I found the whole conversation kind of amusing because, as best as I could tell, nearly all of the dishes being left in the sink belonged to Francoise. I was not yet comfortable enough with my neighbors to leave any belongings, including dishes, in our common area.

There was apparently no law or social norm keeping the occupants of the basement on Paradis Street from smoking cigarettes inside the house, which seemed to be their favorite pastime. They all smoked like chimneys. I spent a lot of time out riding my bike.

Quebec City stands alone in my memory as the most beautiful place I have ever lived. The old city, with its narrow cobblestone streets, stone walls, cannons, and monuments, was crowded along the bluff next to the broad sweep of the St. Lawrence river. It was evocatively beautiful. It is the only fortified city in North America, and everywhere your turned you were confronted by soaring ramparts and batteries. The walls bristled with heavy cannons which had oxidized green over the years of peaceful neglect. Interspersed liberally throughout the city were also parks, soccer fields, and museums. Bike paths connected everything. In fact, I never used my car the entire time I was there. Quebec city was also unique for its tunnel system, made necessary by the extreme Quebec winters. The entire university was connected by underground tunnels so that its students need never step outdoors in the wintertime. You could go from your room, to class, to the dining hall, and also to the supermarket without ever stepping outside. Artists had taken ownership of different sections of the tunnel, whose walls were lined with art, poetry and philosophy. It was very stimulating. I always took the tunnels just for the novelty of it. It felt to me like I was living on a lunar colony, and I enjoyed imagining that stepping outdoors would rip the oxygen out of my lungs.

My neighbor, Bruno, had a girlfriend. I don't recall her name. She was tall with curly reddish-brown hair and always wore a pair of lavender suede boots. She would come over occasionally to visit Bruno. I can remember the first time she ever came over. I was in my room studying when I heard a rhythmic banging against the wall, punctuated at intervals by throaty moans. I instantly deduced that Bruno and his girlfriend were having an intimate moment on the other side of the paper thin wall. I decided to go for a walk, but as I was moving about my room, gathering some things before leaving, the sounds form the next room stopped and I could hear Bruno's girlfriend talking to him in muffled French. I'm not sure but my theory is that when she heard me moving around on the other side of the wall she became a little more self-conscious. I was also uncomfortable. I left.

My theory was confirmed the next time Bruno's girlfriend came over. Bruno came and knocked on my door, and without any embarassment he told me frankly that he was going to have sex with his girlfriend and that I should go watch TV or something. Francoise was smoking a cigarette and watching Musique Plus, which was the Quebecois equivalent of MTV, with a surly looking boy in the lounge.  I thanked him sincerely for the warning and went for a bike ride instead.

That became the routine after that. She would come over. Bruno would knock on my door and I would go for a bike ride.

One night, I was feeling tired after a long day of classes and bike riding, when Bruno came knocking on the door. He jerked his thumb toward the lounge, not in a rude way, but just with an easy familiarity. This was a well-established ritual by that time which required no words. In truth, by this time Bruno and I had become something north of mere association but still south of true friendship. He had given me a tour of his home which was being remodeled, and would occasionally bring me things from his convenience store, hot dogs, pizza, and slurpees, which he explained would have been thrown away anyway. One day, I even helped him install some base boards in his dining room. He would also routinely offer me beer and cigarettes which I declined. Hot dogs, pizza and slurpees were my vice of choice. He never offered me any of his marijuana however, which he also smoked liberally and often. I would have declined, of course, but still I found it odd that he never offered any. Anyway, when he came knocking I was feeling exhausted so I opted to sit with Francoise and one of her friends in front of the TV in the lounge. True to form both ignored me. After a few moments we were joined by Bruno and his girlfriend. They rolled a joint and began passing it back and forth. Francoise and her friend were likewise sharing a bottle of wine and smoking cigarettes. The room was filled with smoke. I decided to go for a bike ride after all.

I rode toward a pay phone near the university. Using an international calling card I spoke briefly with Sarah who was back in California for the summer. I was sick from missing her. Her voice was like food and drink to me. The amount of time left on the calling card forced the call to end sooner then she or I wanted it to. Ah well! Such was life for poor college students in those days. The calling card put a necessary governor on the amount of time we spent talking on the phone. If we had cell-phones we would have racked up serious charges, of that I have no doubt. After hanging up I was faced with a difficult decision- either return to the smokey basement on Paradis Street or continue prowling the night on my bike. It was then that I decided to just stay out all night. Why go home? The thought was liberating. I had no classes the next day. I had my health, a good bike and money in the bank.

I rode across the university to a 24-hour grocery store where I wandered around for a while before buying some postcards, a pepsi and a box of fig newtons. I love fig newtons. Then I turned my bike toward the old city down by the river. The bike paths were well-known to me by then. I chose one that dropped down off the heights to a wide path along a smaller river that flowed into the mighty St. Lawrence. According to a historical landmark placard placed alongside the path, the course of the bike path followed that of an old indian trail. The indians eventually led me out along the St. Lawrence itself whose broad expanse had been whipped up by a stiff wind into large waves which ran contrary to the river's current. Music, light, and laughter spilled out of the many eateries and bars which lined the river. I pedaled against the wind before turning toward the narrow streets that climbed the bluff. Riding over the cobblestones was tough going, especially going uphill, so I dismounted and walked my bike up through the city and out onto the plains of Abraham. Near the citadel, and not far from where General Wolfe died in the French and Indian War I sat down on a bench overlooking the river. Despite the wind it was a warm night. I produced my fig newtons from my back pack and ate them, washing them down with my pepsi. I watched for a long time as large ships bound to or from the ocean made their way up and down the river. They were all lit up like birthday cakes on the black sheet of the river.

All night I rode my bike through the quiet city until the bells from the Catholic churches peeled out a welcome to the dawn,  and as the sun rose up over La Rue Paradis, I chained my bike and descended the dark stairwell into the basement. Everyone was just exactly where I had left them, smoking in front of the TV.

THE SLEEPING CLUB- CHAPTER 1

A young man, rail thin, maybe thirty, and oddly toothless, sat in the shade of his front porch. His wife, fat and sweaty, stood in the doorway leaning against the door jam and staring out over the shimmering, sun-drenched fields. An assortment of hand carved canes and walking sticks leaned against the wall between them. Wood shavings littered the porch around the man’s feet.

I put one foot on the second step leading up to the porch and leaned forward, resting my forearms on the elevated knee, waiting for an answer.

The summer sun beat down mercilessly on the yard. Sweat-darkened splotches spread out from under my arms and across the small of my back.

After a long silence the man finally spoke in a sloppy, toothless voice, “The woods is full of demons.”

“Uh-huh,” seconded the wife in agreement.

“Demons?” I said. “What do you mean, demons?”

They both just sat and stared dumbly across the fields. They resembled sailors scanning the sea. I turned half expecting to see something that had caught their attention, but the expanse of fields stretched uninterrupted all the way to the horizon.

“Well? What do you mean?” I asked again.

The man giggled unnaturally, but offered no explanation. The wife smiled broadly revealing discolored teeth like crowded kernels of corn but likewise offered no explanation. I couldn't be sure what exactly had struck them as funny, but something in their demeanor made me feel that I was the punch line.

"These two are unhinged," I thought to myself.

Interrupting the man, who was still giggling, I said, “Well, let’s get down to brass tacks, will you help me or not?”

The man looked up at his wife, but she continued to stare straight ahead, ignoring him.

He shook his head in mock frustration then returning his attention to me said, “Maybe, a hundred dollars?”

The wife shrugged as if to wash her hands of the whole thing and went back inside the house.

“Hundred dollars,” I agreed.

The back seat of their car was covered in an odd assortment of tools, which the toothless young man, whose name was Raymond, shoved roughly onto the passenger side before motioning me to get in. His wife, whose name I had learned was Nina, limped off the porch and slid in behind the steering wheel. Raymond sat close beside her on the passenger side. Inside the close confines of the car the smell of unwashed humans mixed with the more honest smells of grease and sawdust clinging to the tools.

Nina turned the key in the ignition, and with a lurch the car pulled out of the yard and nosed its way down a dusty dirt road. The dirt, dry as baby powder, spewed out from under the car’s tires leaving a long widening cloud behind us as we drove.

Fields stretched away on either side like fabric along a zipper. Whatever had been planted in them had withered under the oppressive sun.

Breaking the silence, I asked, “Are the woods really full of demons?”

Raymond looked over his shoulders and flashed me a toothless grin and began giggling again. 

We drove a little further in silence before Raymond offered more, “I can’t say I’ve ever seen em', but my brother, Bill, swears that one day he was working a tractor close to the woods and he looked over and saw two girls watching him from inside the trees."

"What's so unusual about that?," I asked.

"They was dressed all in white, and their skin was white as paper. Even their hair was white, but Billy said their eyes was black as a pit, and they were watching him. It weren’t natural. No matter where he went they moved with him, staying inside the woods, and all the time just watching him. He just left the tractor and ran off. Old Top Manley had to go out and bring the tractor in.”

"They weren't little girls," said Nina. "They was about the size of little girls, but Billy said they had an old look about 'em. Weren't that what Billy said?"

Raymond gave no answer.

“Tell him about what Scott saw,” Nina suggested.

Oh yeah,” continued Raymond, “maybe two years ago, Scott Peters, he lives over by us, he was out working the fields near the woods, when he saw a whole mess of animals come running out  of there- bears, deer, turkeys, hogs you name it- they was all just running around at the edge of the trees. And even though he was rumbling past on his tractor they wouldn’t run back in the woods. The only thing he could figure was that something real nasty scared them out of the trees."

“Everyone knows the woods the woods is full of demons,” said Nina as though that settled it.

‘That’s why they call it ‘Demon Woods,” agreed Raymond.

Soon the woods came into view, first as a black line on the horizon and then growing larger and more distinct as we drew closer. The road grew narrow and the fields gave way to thin weedy scrub on either side. 

As Nina guided the car into the trees branches scraped across the windows and the overgrown center of the neglected road whispered against the car’s undersides. It vaguely reminded me of a car wash, and I said as much to Raymond who had closed his eyes and was whispering softly to himself as if praying. He either didn’t hear me or was ignoring me.

Approximately two-hundred yards inside the woods the car came to a stop before a fallen tree that blocked the road in an unambiguous way.

“I ain’t going any further,” said Nina, “not on foot anyway.”

Raymond, stopped praying, and opened his eyes to look at his wife, who shifted the car into reverse as if to put an exclamation point on her statement.

“Hey, we had a deal here!” I said feebly from the back seat.

Raymond looked at me and then back at his wife.

“We ain’t going any further, Raymond,” she repeated.

“We ain’t going any further,” said Raymond to me.

“Alright,” I said resignedly, “how do I get there?”

“It’s real easy. You just walk another couple hundred yards down the road. There'll be an old house on your left. Behind the house there’s a trail. Just follow the trail for a ways and it’ll take you right up to the old Indian Cave. You should make it before the sun goes down."

I got out of the car, and shouldered my pack. Neither Raymond nor Nina got out of the car. In fact, no sooner had I exited the car than Nina began backing her way down the road and out of the woods. There were no farewells, no “good lucks,” not even so much as a friendly wave.

I was alone in the Demon Woods.

SECRET SPOT- THE LEDGE

Way up in the woods behind the house in Castleton there is a cliff of matamorphic shale along one side of a pass, and about half way up that cliff there is a ledge. If you found the place, and it is there quietly waiting to be found, you would see at one end of the ledge a crude fireplace- just a large flat stone surrounded on three sides by tightly stacked rocks to kick back the heat. I first discovered the ledge during one of my frequent wanderings through the woods behind the house. I loved those woods. Sometimes, as I lay in bed at night, struggling to go to sleep, I will wander them in my mind's eye. I can still retrace the old faded logging roads and every turn of the brook as it dropped down into the gorge towards its rendezvous with Briton Brook. It is all mapped out in my mind, not as it is perhaps, but as it was when I was a boy. The pass where I found the cliff connected our valley to the next one. It was an interesting spot. I remember that it was always damp up there. Even during the driest of times it was a mossy, squishy place. In the height of summer ferns grew waist-high and bramble canes grabbed at your jeans and t-shirt as if to say "wait a minute." It was a muddy, squishy place because it was a seeping, oozing place. Water made its way out through cleavage planes in the surrounding rocks. It pooled quietly in the low place between the hills before giving birth to mirror brooks which first trickled, then babbled, then flowed down opposite sides of the pass into the neighboring valleys.

The ledge could only be safely accessed by climbing high above it and then working your way carefully down a steep trail (what animal was responsible for that trail I do not know, but I have always wondered). It was necessary to grab saplings and bushes to check your speed as you went. The trail, which is a generous description, came down to the very lip of the cliff where it petered out. Once at the cliff you were forced to lay down on your belly and let your feet dangle over the edge, slowly lowering yourself down until your inquisitive toes met solid footing below. The first time I did this I was terrified that somehow I would mess up and fall to my death, and even after I had frequented the ledge many times I always felt tense and frightened while my feet dangled uncertainly. Only when I felt the ledge solidly underfoot could I resume breathing. Then I would let the rest of my weight down onto the ledge and slump against the cliff face and take in the view. The view was nothing spectacular. Below was the pass in all of its squishy, muddy grandeur and opposite were the woods climbing up the other side of the pass.

I built the fireplace at the far end of the ledge on a snowy day in March. I got the stones to the ledge by rolling them over the lip and letting them drop down onto the ledge. For every two stones that stayed on the ledge a third one would roll off and crash down the cliff face. By the time I had finished building the fireplace the sun was starting to go down so I had to wait until the next day, after school, to have my first fire on the ledge. After school, the next day, I set out for the ledge straight away. On my way up I stripped bark from fallen birch trees for tinder, but I waited until I was closer to the ledge to gather the firewood because I needed both hands to safely negotiate the descent to the ledge. Luckily, there was no shortage of dry wood in the neighborhood of the ledge. I had many fires up there on the ledge, but none as great as that first one. I folded up my jacket so I wouldn't have to sit on the cold rock. Fat snowflakes were falling through the quiet woods, but I was wrapped in the orangle glow of my fire up on the ledge. It was better than any fort I had known as a boy. It was perfect.

THE GREATEST MYSTERY OF MY YOUTH

When I was a boy I buried a small box in the woods behind the house. The box had no purpose. There was no plan. I just liked secret buried boxes, and although it would have been satisfying to give the buried box some great purpose I had nothing of value to hide and nobody to hide things from. It was simply for the joy of secret buried boxes that I did it. I'm a little embarassed to even confess this one-time hobby of mine. In truth, it was not the first box I had buried in this manner. In the quiet days of youth before the clay of a boy's brain has hardened they sometimes find interesting and frivolous pursuits to fill their days with. With a garden trowel I carved out a hole roughly the size of the box, and I buried it level with the ground so that by lifting up a flat rock the top of the box became visible. The lid was hinged and lifted easily. When all was done I scattered pine needles over the rock so that the whole thing looked as natural as can be. I was alone, and I had told no one about my plan to bury the box.
When I returned the next day the rock had been shoved aside and the lid stood open. I can recall making the discovery. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. I must have been watched I reasoned, but by whom?  Where had they watched me from? I turned around in a circle taking in the woods which had suddenly become vaguely sinister. After I had left they must have come to investigate what I had buried. And why did they not leave the place as I had left it? They must have wanted me to know that they had discovered the box. Why else would they leave the stone shoved aside and the lid standing open? It remains one of the great mysteries of my youth. I buried no more boxes.

BUBBLE GUM FOR BRAINS

During my senior year of high school I took a college prep course called Anatomy and Physiology because I was told it would look good on my college transcripts. As I have matured over the years into greater self-awareness I have realized that God never crafted me to think as a scientist, but as a teenager I still believed that all paths were still open to me. I could be anything I wanted to be! Who knows, maybe even a Doctor. So, during third period on the first day of my senior year I found myself seated in the back row of Anatomy and Physiology listening with horror as Mrs. Pelletier explained our goals for the year. While attempting to teach me about anatomy and physiology, Mrs. Pelletier would inadvertently help me understand the finite limits of my God-given design. In this she proved to be a good teacher. (It must be said that she was also a good teacher in the conventional sense. She was also a fine human being as well.) 

I muddled along, limping through assignments that other, more gifted, students bounded through with the grace and ease of a deer. Then, one Friday, Mrs. Pelletier assigned the class a homework assignment to be completed over the weekend. She wanted us to create a three-dimenional cross-section of the human brain using any materials we wanted. "Be creative and have fun with it," she said. It was a mickey mouse sort of assignment that some of my classmates thought was just busy work but I finally felt that I was on equal footing. 

By the time I got home I had formulated my plan of attack. My Dad was heading out to run some errands so I asked him if I could tag along. At our first stop, U-$ave Discount Foods on Rt. 4A in Hydeville, I purchased a large assortment of chewing gum. It was necessary for the purposes of my cross-section that I find gums of  different colors in order to differentiate the different parts of the brain. Fortunately, U-$ave had a great variety of gums. I filled a sack with pink, red, green, blue, purple and even black gum. Once back home I enlisted my brother Job's aid in chewing up all that gum. We sat down in front of the TV and chewed and chewed and chewed as we watched Jeopardy. We chewed until our jaws positively ached. The thing about gum, especially the old, expired gum for sale at U-$ave, is that at first your jaws really have to work to soften the gum and then the chewing gets easier, but when all you're doing is working on softening new pieces of gum it's pretty tiring work.

Our first job was to form the cerebral cortex using big gobs of pink dubble-bubble chewing gum. I lined a box with tin foil, and put the cerebral cortex in place. It looked amazingly realistic! "This was going to be the best brain cross-section ever!" I thought to myself. Thrilled by the success of the cerebral cortex I fell to chewing more gum for all of the other parts. The medulla oblongata, the pituitary gland, the cerebellum, the thalamus...these and others were all added and when the brain was fully constructed I had to admit I was very proud of the overall effect. It looked almost exactly like the multicolored, textured illustration in my textbook. Next I took little toothpicks, glued numbered penants to them and stuck them all over the cross section labeling the various parts of the brain, and then created a separate key that listed each part next to their corresponding numbers. It is one of the few times in High School that I finished an assignment as soon as I got home, and for the first time in Anatomy and Physiology I was completely confident of my work. The nicest thing about my brain was that it filled the entire house with the heavenly aroma of chewing gum. Really, is there a more pleasing aroma?

I put a lid on my bubblegum brain and put it on a shelf for the remainder of the weekend. When I got to school on Monday morning I took the lid off to show my masterpiece to a friend, and, horror of horrors, all of the saliva had come out of the bubblegum and had pooled in a slick pinkish puddle all around the brain. "Nasty!" my friend loudly exclaimed, and soon a crowd had gathered around my brain. The librarian, Mr. Luzer (Yes, it was pronounced "loser."), stopped in passing and suggested that I label the oozing saliva "cerebrospinal fluid," which is exactly what I did. With Mr. Luzer's help I went to the teacher's lounge where I acquired another toothpick and a tiny penant of red construction paper. Working quickly before the bell rang I just managed to get it done before first period.

When the bell rang for third period I retrieved the brain from my locker and proudly carried it to be presented to Mrs. Pelletier. As I put my brain alongside the others, and took my seat, I proudly noted that mine was clearly the most excellent of the brains. The only other brain that was any good had been made by a girl named Lindsay who had cooked strands of spaghetti in food coloring and then had arranged them into the shape of a brain and  allowed them to dry out in the oven so that the whole thing stuck together. Still, I remained confident of the superiority of my bubblegum brain. However, as class began, and Mrs. Pelletier walked up and down reviewing and critiquing each brain in turn, she stopped before my brain, and I noted that her face was contorted into a horrific mask of disgust. "Is that gum?!?!?!" she said as though she had just spied a rattlesnake. "Whose is this?" she demanded. Everyone looked at me. "Uh... it's mine...," I stammered lamely,"... it really looks like a brain."  She moved on quickly without commenting further. I was surprised and embarassed! Really, I was completely blindsided and bewildered by her obvious disapproval. 

After class, Mrs. Pelletier asked me to remove my brain from the classroom, which, if you think about it, is a very interesting thing for a teacher to say to a student. The other brains would remain on display, but mine would have to go. I didn't ask for an explanation, but she offered one anyway- "It's kind of gross," she said. "Yeah I know," I said, laughing as though the whole thing had been a practical joke or something, which it hadn't been. 

A week later I got my grade- C+. Beneath my grade were the comments, "Very creative, but unhygienic!" (She was right of course. That I can't deny.)

I felt deflated, but when I showed my grade to Mr. Luzer, he said simply and without fanfare, "It was clearly the best brain," and then he went back to his work. It was the nicest thing any of the faculty at Fair Haven Union High School ever said to me, and his simple words of affirmation were better than an A+. 

Mr. Luzer will always be a winner to me.

M.U.S.C.L.E. MEN

When I was a kid growing up at 816 Somerset Place in Hyattsville, MD all the kids in my neighborhood collected M.U.S.C.L.E. Men. There were hundreds of them, each a unique little plastic sculpture. I loved them. In truth, I love them still. Rich kids had buckets of 'em, but even the poorest kids had modest collections. In that brand of economy unique to neighborhood kids and prisons they became a kind of currency. I recall that certain kinds of M.U.S.C.L.E. Men were considered especially rare and thus also valuable. Many a happy summer afternoon were spent sitting on the sidewalk in front of the house trying to improve my standing within the M.U.S.C.L.E. Man community through some shrewd trades. When I wasn't trading M.U.S.C.L.E Men I enjoyed arranging them on the window sill next to my bed or playing with them in the bathtub.

My parents were neither rich nor overly indulgent and thus my own collection was relatively modest. However, I diligently saved my dollar that I earned every week from helping with the family's paper route. This I stored in an envelope which I hid in various locations throughout my room. I changed the hiding place often, sometimes even several times a day, not because it was in any danger of being burgled but because, like all children, I loved the idea of a secret, hidden treasure.

The day eventually came when I reached my savings goal which was to buy a large box of M.U.S.C.L.E. Men which I had seen on display at a K-Mart down the road. I do not recall how much this cost, but I do recall that it took what felt like several lifetimes to amass the necessary funds. This was my long-imagined day of comeuppance. I drained the treasury, which on that particular day had been secreted away inside my pillow case, and entrusted the entire fortune to my older brother, John, who was going to K-Mart with my Mom. The M.U.S.C.L.E. Men were packaged in a flat box with a thin see-through plastic window on its front which allowed you to see just a few of the men it contained. I gave John instructions to look through the window of each box in search of certain rare and sought-after M.U.S.C.L.E. Men. The biggest prize was to find a M.U.S.C.L.E Man that nobody on the block had seen yet.

After what seemed like hours the family's station wagon finally rumbled back into the driveway and before it even came to a stop I was running alongside trying to discern from John's face how he had fared at K-Mart. He was inscrutable. When John handed me the box of M.U.S.CL.E. Men I dropped to my knees in the grass next to the car and tore it open on the spot. I marveled at my newfound riches. There were no new species of MUSCLE Man for me to name and describe to our emerging science, but there were several sought after specimens including one who was half crocodile and half man. He was one that had only recently been discovered on the block and was a hot commodity.

That night my window sill was crowded with little pink monsters and chief among them was the crocodile man. I loved him.

My school, Ridgecrest Elementary, had a strict policy against bringing toys to school. In fact, if found they were always confiscated and it was my teacher's policy not to release them unless your Mom or Dad came to get them after school. Most kids chose to forfeit their toys rather than suffer a lecture from their parents, and it was rumored that one of the drawers in her desk was a veritable Aladin's cave of abandoned toys. 

Despite the risk, I just could not bear the thought of being separated from the crocodile man for an entire school day. So before shouldering my backpack I slipped him into my pants pocket, reasoning that I would only take him out on the way to and from school and possibly also if I went to the bathroom. 

At some point during that morning my teacher gave the entire class some busy work and then stepped out into the hall to talk something over with the principal. I finished my work early and then, in a moment of weakness, decided to have a brief little moment with crocodile man. I fished him out of my pocket and was admiring him when the door unexpectedly swung open on the quietest hinges that I have never heard. My teacher's eyes swept across her charges with a trained eye and before I could return him to the safety of my pants pocket they locked onto crocodile man. My heart sank.

She couldn't have known that crocodile man was worth all those hours delivering papers, or of the special place it held in my heart, and my window sill back home. In truth, I doubt she would have cared   much even if she had known.

Without saying a word she crossed the room until she stood in front of my desk and then she held out her hand demanding that I hand over my newly acquired M.U.S.C.L.E Man, my precious. My classmates were enjoying the show. All eyes were on me, and I was blushing.

''Uh...it's an eraser,'' I lied.

''Show me,'' she said, beckoning toward a piece of paper.

I took crocodile man in hand and with a lump in my throat began rubbing his head against the busy work I had just completed. To my teacher's surprise, and also my own, the M.U.S.C.L.E. Man erased beautifully.

''Oh,'' my teacher said, apparently believing my lie. Then she turned and went back to her desk without confiscating my toy. Crocodile man went back in my pocket.

The kid who sat next to me said, ''That's sick! I didn't know they made M.U.S.C.L.E. Man erasers! Where'd you get that?''

''K-Mart,'' I said.