Peter Pan, Rotten Smells, and a Moose Named James

I will be retiring in about a month
and have just directed
my last classroom performance of Peter Pan.
This past week
I invited primary children to squeeze together on the floor
while parents and adult friends
perched on tiny chairs in the back of the classroom.
We had been practicing since Easter
and the Darling family knew their parts, mostly.
Nana the dog could Woof in the right spots,
the Indians knew their dance,
Crocodile could slither and wrestle,
the pirates were great at "Arrrrrrr",
and the Lost Boys were slightly wild, right on cue.
Pan and Hook had practiced their sword fight.
"Bold boy, prepare to die," growled Hook.
"To die will be an awfully big adventure!" responded Pan.
The choir belted out, "I won't grow up!"
It was a great success.

The day before the play's opening,
I entered the classroom and smelled rotting flesh.
Though I could see no droppings,
no chewed particles,
the smell was somewhat familiar,
dead mouse.
I imagined calling maintenance:
"Hello, Maintenance? This is Sue Shaffner.
I smell something dead in my classroom."
"Something dead?
You mean besides the bear skull,
the deer skull,
the horseshoe crab,
the five foot blacksnake skin,
the taxidermy armadillo,
and the 217 bones recently extracted from the owl pellet?"

Instead I lay on the floor by the heater
with a flashlight,
looking for fur.
I would have taken the heater apart,
but it was covered with child-painted sky mural,
as children needed to stand atop the heater to fly to Never Land and back.
Instead I sprayed every surface in the room with air freshener,
hoping for the best.
After our first performance,
a shy little girl raised her hand and said, "What stinks?"
I started into a short science talk
about rotting flesh and opportunistic mice
when a boy at the next table piped up,
"Well, I didn't know what to do with my egg..."
He reached into his desk tray
and lifted up a pink plastic egg into the air
and a large gooey glob hit his folder
and splattered onto his tablemates' belongings.
The stench exploded.
Kids faces disappeared inside their shirts
and the sounds of gagging filled the room.
Apparently he had not been listening a month earlier
when I had instructed everyone
to take their "Egg Olympics!" eggs
to the cafeteria for disposal.
Instead, his hard-boiled egg lurked inside his desk for weeks
tucked inside his plastic egg,
decomposing.
We opened every window,
took the garbage can outside,
and all cleaned our desk trays
with wintergreen alcohol.
When the afternoon audience arrived,
the rotting smell still lingered.
Thankfully, the crowd was understanding.

It was great to have an audience after weeks of practice.
I had put a tape line on the floor
to keep the climactic battle scene in bounds
but it wasn't helping,
so I asked "Slightly" to set up the stuffed moose cousins
as a front row audience.
The moose cousins,
really Hallmark "Comet" reindeer from the 90s,
are my boys' daily playmates.
They have names written on their butt tags,
named for someone encountered on their day of purchase--
Hans and Tangie from thrift stores in Montana,
Jack and Shirley from Utah,
Barbara and Leslie from local Goodwill trips--
and have Goodwill sweaters to help tell them apart.
"Slightly" loved his moose-arranging job.
He angled their heads to look all around--
some watched the London skyline,
some the clouds above Never Land,
some waited for the pirates to tie up their captives,
some kept an eye on the Jolly Roger--
and then he quickly returned the cousins to their basket after curtain-call.
It was Slightly who suggested that,
during actual performances,
the moose cousins sit all over the bookshelves
so they could still watch the play.

Recently I found a new cousin.
I brought him to school and told Slightly
that this cousin had heard about his good work in the moose world
and wanted to belong to him.
His eyes widened.
I asked if he had a name for the new cousin.
"Not yet," he responded,
"but could he have a sweater?"
A few hours after a sweater was chosen,
Slightly returned to my desk
and whispered, "His name is James."
We wrote it on his butt tag.

James went home with Slightly that day.
I imagine them having adventures in the wilds of Penfield
and James tucked into the crook of Slightly's elbow
as he grows, slightly, each night.
Generations of children have left my classroom
and have grown up.
Many of those kids now have kids themselves.
We know that "I won't grow up" is a lie,
that it happens in the bat of a moose's eyelash.
The last line of our Peter Pan play is
"Wendy never saw Peter Pan again,
but she told the story of Peter Pan to her children
who told it to their children
who told it to their children
for ALL children grow up,
except one."

This new growing season
I wish you pleasant smells,
hugs from small children
or stuffed animals,
and joy in your coming adventures.