Longwood Gardens

After reading Cicada's Longwood post, I decided to come out of hiding for a moment to share what was one of the funniest experiences of my childhood.

My family had moved out of our old apartment, but the deal to the new house had fallen through, so we moved in with a sixty-year-old friend of the family, Mrs. Graham. We lived with her for four months or so, but to my four-year-old mind it seemed an eternity. We had six kids and she had four still living at home. She even gave up her own bed for my parents while she slept on the couch. We then moved to the house my mom still lives in, but we have kept in close contact with Mrs. Graham ever since.

You must realize that Mrs. Graham is as lively a widow as you will ever meet. She is an actress, was in the Miss America pageant, and loves to play Yahtzee with kids. She also loves gardening, which is where our story really begins.

One of her favorite places in the world is the aforementioned Longwood Gardens. She used to take me there from time to time. We would wander around the gardens pretending to speak a different language while she picked off pieces of plants so she could transfer them to her own garden.

When I was in first grade she told me to bring a friend. I invited my friend Danae, who made an immediate impression on Mrs. Graham by complaining about everything, at which point I told Mrs. Graham that she was no better with her complaining about Danae's complaining. What a clever child I was! We had not spent long around the gardens when we got to the main lake. The cold winter air had created a veneer of ice about four feet wide around the circumference of the lake. The fish were still swimming underneath and the ducks were still paddling in the middle. Mrs. Graham stopped along the sidewalk to talk (as she often did at inopportune moments) while Danae and I approached the muddy side of the lake.

I plucked a reed from the marshy bank and began to poke the ice. It broke with relative ease under the pressure of the reed. When I had successfully broken the ice nearest the bank, I reached a little farther, extending my arm to its fullest length and leaning forward in order to split the ice. I leaned a little too far and tumbled head first into the icy water. My eyes shot open with shock under the thin ice and I saw the feet of the ducks reaching deep into the water as they passed, unshaken.

I turned myself around, and with arms heavy from a wet winter coat, I threw my upper body back onto the bank and gasped for breath. Danae was still screaming. I looked up in time to see Mrs. Graham still talking to her new friend. She then looked at me and put her hands to her face as she proceeded to laugh. She walked slowly over to me, laughing the whole time. She helped pull me up, then said, "Sorry for laughing, it's just that you looked like a crocodile!" It was that day I learned that crocodiles are hilarious.

We spent the rest of the visit in the office, waiting for my clothes to dry. I wore some clothes in the lost and found, which I remember being scratchy and plaid. And so the only question I had at the end of that cold day was, Who loses their pants at Longwood Gardens?