The Plank House

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Elementary school projects never seemed to go my way. I was an eager child, an attribute that seldom made up for the fact that I often failed to think things through. For example, there was the science project where I tried to demonstrate how light affects spore growth by setting out two slices of bread on my desk and another two slices in my desk drawer. Result: a lot of dried-up bread. Turning in two weeks’ worth of pictures that documented the bread getting crumblier and increasingly more pathetic-looking was the most humiliating part of that ordeal.

Then there was the time that we all took home one of the butterflies we had raised in class because there were still several weeks of Alaskan winter to go before we could release them outside. I was unprepared for the responsibility of caring for something more complicated than a Tamagotchi, and the way the butterfly clung helplessly to my bedroom window and fluttered around my room all night freaked me out so much that I threw it away in the bathroom trash can, burying it alive under a heap of crumpled tissues. I still feel guilty about it.

The school Christmas play seemed promising enough with me in the lead, overacting my heart out, and in fact, it went great—right up to the minute I barfed all over the auditorium. It seemed that elementary school was not my cup of high-fructose fruit punch and that I should just accept my failure and try again in junior high. But then we were assigned the Native Alaskan Diorama projects, and I changed the face of sixth grade forever.

Well, maybe not. But I sure thought I was going to.

The Native Alaskan Diorama projects were the apex of our elementary careers. We were each assigned a particular Native Alaskan tribe, and we then constructed, with varying amounts of interference by our parents, a miniature replica of that tribe’s traditional house. It was a project reserved for sixth graders, and every year when they went on display, I drooled over the rows and rows of tiny houses of wavering cultural accuracy, eager for my turn.