EDMOND — Last month I watched a young man carve jack-o-lanterns in his kitchen and was reminded of other, even younger hands poking crepe paper into chicken wire frames, making duct tape pillows for sticking butcher paper to banquet hall walls, winding ivy around trellises. …

That young man never spent hours in the company of his classmates and me building homecoming floats and stage props, decorating the gym for a high school prom or the stage for a baccalaureate address. But he might have, and I would have applauded the dedication he brought to the task.

Sponsorship was a big part of my job in the little town where I taught. High school teachers fall into that duty unprepared. If they’d known what was coming, they might have chosen a different vocation.

In “the block,” teachers are taught that sarcasm has no place in the classroom … that their heels mustn’t click on the classroom floor tile … that a skewed bell curve is as much their fault as it is the students’.

No mention is made of the hundreds of bumpy miles they’ll be traveling on drafty yellow school buses shepherding teens to their various destinations.

I was young, eager and ignorant that first year, so I was flattered when the junior class chose me as their sponsor.

Their homecoming parade float that October was an orange parachute stretched taut over a roundish, tractor-size wooden frame. Students painted a jack-o-lantern face on the outside and the driver blindly steered from its insides, trusting the kid who ran along beside him to keep him in line.

They won fourth place out of four, but the next year they proved themselves to be more innovative than they’d been as juniors. They wrapped chicken wire around wooden frames, pushed and twisted the wire into desired shapes, and punched crepe paper into the little holes until a recognizable object immerged.

That float won first-place. Good. They deserved a reward, considering what I’d put them through the previous spring when it had fallen my lot to sponsor their junior/senior banquet.

They wanted a Southern Plantation theme, so I sent them out to cut down and haul into the gym an enormous elm tree, to which they attached a million white paper magnolia blossoms before erecting the tree with ropes thrown over the rafters. No one was badly injured during the tree dragging in, hanging up or dragging out.

A couple of Sundays later, the principal phoned to ask how the juniors were coming along with their stage decorating for that evening’s baccalaureate service. His question came as a complete surprise to me. I mumbled something falsely confident and hung up.

Then I phoned the junior class president; he rounded up a dozen or more students, and we set out to beg, borrow and, yes, steal blooming flowers throughout town. The podium never looked prettier.

That year already had been a doozy, including the junior play I’d been required to sponsor — another on-the-job training experience. Next time I would choose a play requiring the least possible number of characters and a set requiring the least possible number of windows and doors.

Parents clap even when lines are forgotten and characters enter and exit at random. The action never totally shut down, so I considered the play a success.

The young man carving jack-o-lanterns in his kitchen became a first-time father last week. I like to think little Sam also will take pleasure in working with his hands; that he’ll be a star athlete one day, and maybe a star float builder, too.



MARJORIE ANDERSON is an Edmond resident.