Carol’s Column

A skeleton out of the cupboard

"WHY are you combing your eyebrows?" I asked my husband last Wednesday night.

"Don't you remember? It's open night at Greenside High. We have to go and look at the kids' work." He polished his spectacles with Windowlene until they sparkled.

"If there's wine, don't drink too much," he muttered as we trotted up the school driveway. "Last time you nearly passed out while talking to the headmaster, if you remember."

Could I forget?

The school hall was crowded. Full of projects, experiments, tittering teachers and proud parents clucking merrily. With reason.

As we entered, like the Titanic, a mother bore down on me waving a glass of white wine.

"My dear, have you seen the lampshade — such exquisite needlework," and she dragged me across to the sewing display.

Indeed, the sewing was exquisite, so much so that one mother was seen walking off in a superbly-cut jacket sporting a 'Made by Std 10' label on the lapel.

The Latin section had reconstructed the Roman Empire. Roman temples and atriums were everywhere.

"Bring on the dancing girls and let's have an orgy," shouted one enthusiastic father, his arms and toupé flapping."

I lost my husband somewhere between biology and geography. "Don't worry Mrs Lazar," said a jovial young master who made Robert Redford look like a kipper, "come and have another glass of wine."

I thought of the wizened old crones with walking sticks and asthma who with unsmiling faces and unbending iron minds had stifled every iota of creativity when I'd been at school.

Things certainly had changed.

It was the science exhibits that were the most breathtaking.

Aerodynamics, pulleys, motors, remote control cars, gasoline engines, electricity, a hydraulic lift, a liquid natural gas submarine — the projects were extraordinary.

Nodes, antinodes, chain reactions and magnetic fields floated around.

As did hordes of mystified parents.

"To think my son's an Einstein," said one mother proudly.

"You think you have problems?" said another, "My daughter's a Leonardo da Vinci."

Suddenly, in the biology section, there was a disturbance.

A young pupil of great versatility and talent, one Thyra Gabriel, had reconstructed a remarkable skeleton of a sheep. Large and magnificent, it stood in all its bony glory.

On the label describing her project, she'd written painstakingly 'My name is Elliot, please do not touch, I am extremely fragile'.

Just then, a gatecrasher in the form of a large boxer-type dog noticed Elliot the skeleton.

Tail wagging and jaws salivating, he approached Elliot with a gleam in his eye and before anyone could move, his tongue unfurled and he licked the sheep lovingly.

It was only the swift action of the Latin and biology departments that saved Elliot from total extinction.

"How was it?" asked the boys later when we arrived home.

"Memorable," said my husband, "memorable."

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