Where in the World?

                I came away from the mailbox disappointed again. Walking into the house sighing for the fourth day in a row, I said to my family, "This is silly. I'm a 46 year old woman, depressed because the paper doll I'm expecting in the mail hasn't arrived yet."

                You see, hundreds of miles away, an eight year old that I claim as a nephew, despite a lack of blood or marriage ties, has a school assignment. (I've claimed his mother as part of my family for decades – in fact, pretty much my whole life – so I get the rest of her family as a bonus.) His mom phoned and said, "So, we've got this Flat Stanley thing. Do you want to help?" Do I? I practically jumped up and down shouting, "Pick me! Pick me!"

                If you've had a child in elementary school any time in the past two decades or so, you've come across Flat Stanley. He's the hero of a children's book, flattened in a freak bulletin board accident. Stanley discovers that his new situation is convenient, travelwise – he can go anywhere for the price of a stamp. Schools all over America now encourage kids to create their own Stanley, or a paper version of themselves, and send him or her to visit friends and relatives. The students mark on a map the places the doll has visited, and learn about those places. It's a fun way to incorporate geography, social studies and letter writing skills into the kids' lessons. The doll is typically photographed wherever s/he visits, and brings those photos and maybe postcards or souvenirs back home to his/her creator.

                 When my son's third grade class did their project, they chose one boy and one girl to represent the class, and made life size Flat Gilberto and Flat Hannah. We got to take Flat Hannah over spring break, and we took a lot of our photos at Disneyland, within minutes of my nephew Jack's house. We have photos of Flat Hannah with Mickey Mouse, at Sea World, and across the border in Tijuana, Mexico. We carried Flat Hannah in a legal sized manila envelope and whipped her out at every opportunity. Flat Hannah rides the Small World boats! Flat Hannah rides the Sun Wheel in California Adventure! As the week progressed, my son (who hates a scene in public) started gritting his teeth. "We have enough pictures, Mom."

                "We don't have any here!" I'd say.

                When his teacher created a page to represent their class in the school yearbook, she put the photo of Flat Hannah and Mickey Mouse in the center of the page. I was delighted. My son was mildly embarrassed.

                My nephew, Jack, had done the standard kid thing of setting his assignment aside and forgetting about it, so that by the time it came to his mother's attention, time was at a premium. I wouldn't have time to get extraordinarily creative, but I'd have time to get local landmarks and have some fun.

                I waited impatiently until Flat Jack showed up. On the day he arrived, my kids knew how excited I'd be. "Mooooom. He's heeeeere."

                I had an entire itinerary planned. I took off on a round trip drive of approximately six hours, stopping to take two or three dozen photos. Flat Jack visited museums, lakes, the major river in our area, petroglyphs, the Navy Air Base that currently houses the Top Gun flight school, an old military fort and Pony Express stop and the highway that "Life" magazine proclaimed "The Loneliest Road in America."

                I took Flat Jack downtown and shot photos, including one under the Reno arch. A family walking down the sidewalk wanted to know where my doll was from and informed me, with glee, "We have a bear." The tiny teddy bear came out of a purse and was suitably photographed under the arch.

                As I taped Flat Jack to a light pole in front of the ballpark and shot him from different angles, the rickshaw driver, waiting for customers needing a ride back to their cars, said, "Ma'am, I've seen a lot of strange things in Reno, but I'm not even going to ask what you're doing."

                For his trip to Virginia City, I actually made Flat Jack a paper bag vest and cowboy hat, so he could get an "old time photo," one of the more popular souvenirs there.

                I also sent Jack brochures and computer printouts from the places the doll and I visited. It's a good thing I used a flat rate mailing envelope.

                At dinner a week later, my 26 year old nephew and my 24 year old daughter ribbed me about the whole thing. "Did you talk to him? Did you buckle him into his seat?"

                This enthusiasm for school projects is a major reason that I got good grades. Yes, I was that kid, the one who got excited when the teacher announced an assignment – "We get to build a scale model of the Great Pyramid at Giza, using sugar cubes? YAAAAAYYYYY!"

                When I was in elementary school, the teacher announced that for our homework, we needed to bring in a leaf from three separate types of plants. I remember clearly one boy wailing that the assignment was too hard. "It shouldn't be that hard," the teacher said. "Just go out in your back yard."

                "I don't have a back yard. We live in an apartment."

                "Well, does your complex have a common area, maybe a playground?"

"NO!"

                "Does it have any lawn, and maybe a tree?"

                "A lawn, but no trees."

                "So there's no other plants besides grass? There's no shrubs or anything?"

                "What are shrubs?"

                "Bushes. Are there any bushes?"

                "Maybe, but not like, right next to our door or anything."

                "Ok, so in your complex, you have a lawn and a bush. There's two leaves right there. There's bound to be a dandelion or some clover in the lawn, so there's your three." The kid pouted.

                I never understood those kids. I went home to my yard, which was over an acre (not counting the horse pasture), and I filled an entire binder. That's how I learned the names of the various plants, so from then on I knew a yew from a juniper. I picked the leaves, mounted them on binder paper, and labeled them. I coveted leaves from our neighbor's tree, a catalpa, since it had huge leaves. After clearing it with my mom, I asked for a leaf, which they gladly gave. It was the largest leaf I had, almost dinner plate size, and I thought it was very clever that I mounted it on the same page as the smallest leaf, a weeping willow. (No blades of grass for me.)

                My teacher, who was familiar with my work, was still floored. "Where did you get all these?"

                "From my yard."

                "All of them?"

                "Well, except one from my neighbors."

                "Where do you live?"

                "Probasco Way."

                The teacher was still puzzled. My fairly ordinary street didn't seem like a botanical paradise.

                I thought of that project when a family friend, Brandi (a freshman) had a similar project for her biology class. "We have to get 20 different kinds of leaves," she told her mother.

                "Oh! Oh! I know EXACTLY where you need to go!" I told her.

                She looked puzzled. "The teacher said to go to Rancho San Rafael or somewhere."

                "No! You need to go to my mother's house!" I was very enthusiastic about the whole thing.

                Brandi said, "Wow. You're more excited about this than my teacher was, and she's pretty excited."

                My mom is now elderly and walks with a walker, so she couldn't come around the yard with us, but she wanted to make sure that Brandi got the full range of leaves. "Don't forget this. Did you make sure she got some of that?" Brandi was excited. More than once, she said, "Our teacher told us we probably wouldn't find any like this!"

                My mom rocks.

                When Brandi brought in her labeled binder full of leaves, she got the same question. "Where did you get all these?"

                "My friend's grandmother's yard."

                She got a good grade. Brandi rocks.

                Last year, my son took an ancient civilizations class in which he had to complete five projects per semester, reflecting whatever civilization they were currently studying. One of the suggested projects was creating a mock archaeological dig.

                My mother still has her horse pasture, even though no horses have lived there for decades. My son gathered up some of the knick knacks I have, some kite string, a yardstick and a shovel, and walked down to his grandmother's house. (We live only two blocks away.) He laid out a string grid pattern, and buried my dollar store antiquities.

                My son also rocks.

                You can guess what his teachers asked. "Where did you do this?"

                "My grandma's house."

                "Where did you get this stuff?"

                "My mom has stuff like this just lying around." (This is quite true.)

                 What would we do, though, without Grandma's yard?

                Grandma: facilitating good grades for generations.