My second grade classroom

1. My second grade classroom was one of six in what was then a new school building, three on each side of a long central hallway. I can still see the rack where we hung our coats and jackets when we arrived each morning. It was built into the room--very modern with clean lines and blond polished wood. I dreamed once that I arrived at school, lined up with my classmates when the bell rang, and filed down the short length of hallway to my classroom. When I took off my coat, standing in front of that built-in coat rack, I was wearing only my slip. It was plain white with a narrow band of lace at the hem and a tiny pink satin rose in the middle of the front. I don't remember what happened next. Maybe I woke up. Maybe I put my coat back on and walked home to get my dress. That's all I remember of the dream, but it is clear as day.

2. My second grade classroom smelled different when we returned to school after winter vacation. The janitors had waxed and polished all the floors until they gleamed. The strange smell was the wax they used. I thought the janitors must have missed us when we stayed away for those two long weeks and they polished the floors to welcome us back.

For the first few days after we came back, boys kept falling over backwards in their chairs with a loud bang. It happened when they leaned their chairs back on two legs and slipped on the gleaming, fragrant floors. We would all laugh at the boy who would usually act embarrassed. But some of them had already learned to cover up being embarrassed emotion with their own loud laughter.

I just realized why only boys fell over backwards like that. The girls all wore dresses so we couldn't push back on just two legs like the boys. Everyone would be able to see our underpants. we knew that it was bad if people could see our underpants but I didn't know why it was bad. Now I know protecting my underpants from being seen also kept me from falling over backwards in my chair. I would have been so embarrassed, not like the boys that just laughed it off. Boys aren't like girls.

3. Mrs. Burkett was my second grade teacher. She wore bright red lipstick and she'd often catch a bit of it on her crooked front tooth. It sounds ugly, but it wasn't. It made her smile friendlier.

4. Second grade was the year we kept a monarch caterpillar in a glass terrarium in our classroom. The terrarium was on the shelf right above my hook on the coat rack. The caterpillar climbed up and down the branches in the terrarium until it finally stopped and turned itself into a chrysalis. I remember thinking it was the most beautiful color of green. We watched and waited for a long time. Then one morning when we came in and started hanging our coats someone noticed the chrysalis had burst open and the butterfly was trying to come out. It took the butterfly all morning to work its way out of the chrysalis. When it had emerged it was all wrinkled and it looked wet. At 2:30, when we went home, the butterfly still looked damp and crumpled. But when we came back the next morning it was all dry and smoothed out--its wings looked freshly painted. Out teacher invited the other classes to visit our room so they could see our butterfly. We were polite during the visits, but we knew we were better than they were because we had a real monarch butterfly. The next day our teacher told us it was time to let our butterfly go free. So we took it outside and left the lid off the terrarium until it flew away.