If you walked down Edgewood Road, then over to Woods Lane, the houses backed up against a stream, a tangle of bushes, and then a wooded hillside. As I remember, Timmy Allen and I would go exploring back there, climbing up into the woods and coming out onto an old delapitated farmhouse. In my memory, the place was creaky and deserted, and once a crazy old farmer appeared out of nowhere and chased us away. But I could have just imagined that.

In Mr. Frantz’s 5th grade class we had a weekly show-and-tell. One time I brought to class a plastic bag filled with the skeleton of a chicken that Tim and I had found up at the farm. For some reason I assumed and anticipated that everyone would be extremely interested in this “find” and the story of how I got it. But the stinky carcass did not go over well, with Mr. Frantz or with my classmates. I had had a crush on Mr. Frantz, so this was quite a let-down. But I was already pretty sure I was on the outs with him, after I got into a fight with Billy Greyson and threw one of those big, hard schoolyard balls at Billy inside the classroom. Billy ducked, the ball smashed an entire table full of test tubes and other science equipment. Unfortunately, at this catastrophic moment, Mr. Frantz walked back into the classroom.

Strangely, Mr. Frantz didn’t get angry. He just sighed and just looked incredibly disappointed at me and told me to clean up the mess. That sense that I had done something irredeemable, and that now my teacher had given up on me, was awful.