How Not To Make A Marble At Home
The Show-And-Tell Incident Of 1980
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Today’s short essay is part of my Offbeat Stories Series and is a true story as far as I can recollect! 😺
Show-And-Tell
It was kindergarten. 1980. It was show-and-tell day at North Elementary School in my hometown of Menomonie, Wisconsin. I was six.1
As you might have guessed, North Elementary School was on the north side of town. Menomonie also had an East Elementary School, located, you guessed it, on the east side of town. The people in charge of naming elementary schools in Menomonie must have had the imagination of a DMV License Plate Inspector.2
That show-and-tell day, my friend, I’ll call him Thaddeus Percival Worthington III to protect his identity, had confided in me that he had forgotten to bring anything for show-and-tell. This was frowned upon. You simply did NOT forget to bring something to Mrs. Hitzel’s3 class for show-and-tell. It quite simply was not done. She had already lectured our class on the importance of our permanent record.
I, however, was not one to miss the chance to show-AND-tell. S and T as the cool kids called it. It was always the highlight of my month. This particular show-and-tell was during the dinosaur phase of my life. I had been studiously investigating the stegosaurus for quite some time, preparing for this moment. I remember clearly bringing in my plastic stegosaurus that day. As usual, I went into a great deal of detail during the “tell” component of my presentation. My fellow kindergarteners instinctively rolled their eyes before they even knew what that meant.
The Marble Incident
Thaddeus was slated to go up in front of the class after my engrossing stegosaurus presentation. While Thad had forgotten to bring anything to show-and-tell, he was a quicker thinker than most and quite a clever guy for a five-year old.
He happened to have a marble in his pocket because this was before smart phones and we didn’t have anything better to put in our pockets other than marbles. When he was called to give his presentation, Thaddeus went up like a champion and explained the following about his marble:
Thaddeus’s Show-And-Tell Presentation
“Hello. My name is Thaddeus Percival Worthington III,” he said with a glimmer in his eyes. Like the showman he was, he took a green marble out of his pocket with a flourish and held it up high, between his thumb and forefinger. The sun glinted off the beautiful glass wonder. He had recently shined the marble to a high luster.
Thaddeus continued, “This past weekend, I made this marble at home,” he said confidently. “Allow me, my fellow classmates, to explain to you exactly how I made this marble and you can as well.”
We were dubious, but enthralled.
“First,” he said, “you take a piece of plain white paper and draw a circle in the center with a crayon. I chose green for this particular marble, but any color will do. Then, once the color is on the paper, you simply crumple up the paper into a ball. Preheat your oven to four-hundred degrees. Coat the ball of paper in Elmer’s Glue and place it in the oven on a baking sheet. Wait for exactly fifteen minutes, and then carefully remove the baking sheet from the oven. You will then have a marble, just like this one I am now holding in my hand. But be careful, it’s gonna’ be hot!”
Thaddeus held up the marble again for dramatic effect.
Mrs. Hitzel was stunned.
We were amazed!
Thaddeus’s brazen lie had her and the entire class speechless. We all applauded. We had no idea you could make a marble in such a manner right in your own kitchen.
Mrs. Hitzel was dumbfounded but snapped out of it.
She got up from her heavy wooden desk, walked up to Thaddeus and stood in front of him for a moment seemingly in deep thought. Then, out of the blue:
Mrs. Hitzel open-hand slapped Thaddeus, hard, right across the face.
The marble dropped out of his hand and it rolled across the floor and came to rest under my desk.
The entire class was stunned at the sudden outburst of violence. Thaddeus began to cry as he searched for his marble.
Thaddeus would never be the same again. Later in life he ended up in the state penitentiary for deceptive dealings in the selling of baseball trading cards. And selling meth.
Mrs. Hitzel was supposedly one of the “good teachers.” In the early eighties, this type of violence against children was permitted, but not encouraged. That said, I’m sure most of the parents would have condoned it.
I’m assuming that in some parts of the country slapping, hitting, or paddling children is still a thing. Heck, there’s probably an executive order being drawn up by the president himself requiring the slapping of all kindergarteners in all schools.
Mrs. Hitzel didn’t say another word after slapping Thaddeus. Also, we weren’t allowed to “tell on” teachers so we kept our mouths shut and our parents never found out about it. Until now.
Thaddeus picked up his marble, sobbing, and went back to his desk. None of us knew why Mrs. Hitzel had struck Thaddeus. I mean, the ability to make a marble was magical. A kind of alchemy. Perhaps the recipe was a secret?
The weekend after the show-and-tell debacle, I decided I’d give marble making a try. I firmly believed Thaddeus. Okay, I had an inkling that it might not work, but I am extremely gullible even to this day.
Much to my parents’ chagrin, the ball of paper and Elmer’s Glue that I attempted to turn into a marble caught on fire in the stove. I threw a bowl of water into the stove and made an incredible mess.
Thaddeus had lied! You can’t make a marble at home, so don’t try it!
The next time I saw Thaddeus on the playground, I slapped him hard across the face. JK, I didn’t really, but I then understood why the teacher had done it.
The End!
I had failed kindergarten on my first try.
There was also a “River Heights Elementary,” but that was for the rich kids. A newer school, it unsurprisingly sat near a river.
Mrs. Hitzel’s name has been changed for her privacy, but I like the name Hitzel and will use it for a character in my upcoming novel!
It is the principle of it.
I had a first-grade teacher like that. In her case, the first week of school, she decided to lead us through the alphabet, asking us assembled snot-dribblers “Do you know a word that begins with… When it cane to “b,” she expected “ball” or “boy” or “bored.” Incipient paleontologist me throws out “Brontosaurus.” (This was 1972, before we were forcefully lectured that Brontosaurus was really Apatosaurus with a wrong head and decades before paleontologists realized that “Brontosaurus” was a valid name after all.)
“How do you spell it?”
Being a savant in paleontological matters, I spelled it out.”
“That’s not a real word. You’re making it up.”
Oh, that was a mistake. The next day, we went to the school library for the first time, and I asked the librarian where I could find dinosaur books. I then went back to my teacher, showed her the book, opened it to a double-page spread of Brontosaurus (still in the painfully obsolete view of it floating in water to support its great bulk), and pointed at the name. “See?”
I was thereby banned from checking out any of the dinosaur books.
Not to say that I continued with a campaign of vindictiveness that would have appalled Harlan Ellison, nor that considering both my dissimilarity to anyone else in my immediate family and some of the weirdos my mother hung around with, I’m reasonably sure that Harlan was my real father. When I got my first writing credits, many were for writing about paleontology, so I tracked down my old teacher and made sure she got copies. When I actually got a magazine column where I could expound on paleontology, I made sure she got a subscription. When she died, I was too late to send a dinosaur flower arrangement, but I’m thinking about dropping off a few the next time I’m in Michigan, just to confuse everyone else at the cemetery. Vindictive? You BETCHA.