Pick Me!

A weblog by Laura Moncur

5/26/2004

Dylan (Part 4)

Filed under: Dylan,Personal History — Laura Moncur @ 5:00 am

Part 1 ? Part 2 ? Part 3

Dylan was the hero for one day in fifth grade. Everyone watched him with bright eyes and for one brief, shining moment, he was The Man.

We had been presenting our reports. I have no idea what my report was on. It was probably on bees. I think I wrote the same report over and over my entire school career. I did reports on bees and diabetes and got good grades every time. I thought that I shouldn’t bother learning anything new when I can specialize. Unfortunately, I didn’t major in either bees or diabetes in college, so all that specialization was for naught. Yeah, my report was probably on bees and boring as hell.

As I remember it, we had been bored all day. The entire class was presenting their reports and every damn one of them had been mind-numbingly boring. I couldn’t tell you the subjects of any of the reports, not even Scott Crookston’s or Greg Wagstaff’s. Now that I think of it. I think Scott talked about some biography he had read. The library had an entire section of biographies about American Heroes. I think Scott read every single one of them. I remember noticing that the only American Heroes that were female were Betsy Ross (for sewing the flag, LAME) and Harriet Tubman (for saving hundreds of lives, ok, that was cool). That makes me really mad right now. How come there weren’t cool biographies about Cleopatra or Queen Elizabeth or Katherine the Great? Sure, they weren’t American Heroes, but they were women who kicked ass just as much as stupid old Davy Crockett. Yeah, I think Scott’s report was probably on Davy Crockett and boring as hell.

Dylan’s report was on medieval armament. After a brief explanation of common weaponry during medieval times, Dylan revealed the miniature catapult that he had made. We were thoroughly unimpressed for thirty seconds. He set it up, placed the small wad of paper in it, and set it off. The paper flew across the room. The power of the catapult disrupted itself, turning the medieval machine on its side on the desk. After the release of the device, the room cheered. Dylan set the catapult up on its legs, reset the spring load and prepared it for another shot.

I was completely shocked. He had kept the fabulousness of his report an absolute secret from me. I imagined that his room at home must be filled with tiny weapons of war, lined up neatly on shelves. While the class cheered, I remember looking at Dylan, surprised and proud of how popular his report was. Yeah, Dylan was the hero that day.

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