Back when Jenny was alive, I had the identity of “Oh, you must be Jenny’s husband”, and no matter how many times I would drolly say, “In fact, I am Sam, and I had my perfectly good own personal identity long before I met her.” it did not change. It was ok. She was a fabulous teacher, and beloved at her school, so I just let them call me that. It made me something I was proud to be.

I was active in her classroom, and would come in and tell stories to her class, and bring in bugs, and lizards, and animals, and interesting things for them, and for a while, maintained an aquarium there.

4th grade kids are at a really special age, where they are starting to take an interest in the outside world, and are open to information if presented in a give and take way. It is before school knocks their curiosity for a loop. I learned to love kids there in her classroom. Being a tall, poorly dressed smiling hippie guy helped me with that. I didn’t look or act like their dads. or the male faculty.

Back in those days, I was working as a foundation plasterer. After the house was built, I would drag my cement mixer and tools out to a house, after picking up my alcoholic coon-ass deep Louisiana helper, Pat, and would mix up a batch of sand and portland cement, and plaster the rough foundation with a nice smooth coat, covering the air bubble marks, and board marks, and making it pretty. As dull a job as it was, there was some fun in the artistry of making it smooth and pretty. It would take me a day or two to do a house. I liked it because I am a morning person, and could get there at 6am, when it was cool and quiet, and outdoors, my preferred working environment. When it got too hot, I would pack up and go home.

One very cool morning, I was working with a flannel shirt over my t-shirt, and took a break from plastering, while Pat was mixing up a new batch. I walked down the to the truck, and there was a big torpid lizard just sitting there in the driveway. I had not come across a lizard that big before. He was a good ten inches long. Brown and gray. He didn’t move as I approached him, so I got close for a good look. He looked back at me. So I reached down, and snatched him up just behind his head. He didn’t seem all that concerned, so I carried him back to where Pat was mixing cement, to show him. I thought, “Now here is a great find for Jenny’s classroom!”

Not having anything to put him in, I took off my flannel shirt, tied a knot in the cuff of the sleeve, and slipped him right in. He still wasn’t moving much, because it was cold outside. I quickly jumped in my truck, raced home, grabbed an empty fish tank, raced to the pet store which was just opening, bought some crickets because I figured that was something he would eat, and headed to the school.

Jenny looked up at the door of the classroom as I walked in with a fish tank under my arm and a bunched up flannel shirt in my other hand, and smiled at me. Like it always did, her smile made me feel great all over. I went up front in the classroom, set the tank down, and turned to the class.

Jenny: Class, it looks like Sam has something special to show us today.

I beckoned the kids up to the desk, and when they were all there, I untied my shirt and shook the lizard out into the tank. He just plopped out there,and looked back at the class while they looked in at him. I tossed in a cricket, and the lizard went to work. He kind of reared his head back, puffed up his neck. and struck at lightning speed, gobbling the cricket down. Some of the kids screamed, but all were fascinated.

Me: Ok, y’all, I gotta get back to work. I hope you take good care of this lizard. See ya.

And I left. That day’s project for the kids became identifying it, setting up the environment in the tank, and, of course, naming him. He became Larry, and was an alligator lizard. He became a fixture in the classroom, living in his tank, in the nature corner of the classroom, next to the fish tank, and the house for Big Al, the guinea pig.

I got Big Al from a guy I knew that bred guinea pigs for pet shops. Big Al had been his star stud pig, and fathered many litters, until he was too old to be a stud pig any more.

Larry and Big Al lived for some years, coming home over Christmas and summer breaks, to live with us at the house, and back to school when classes started again. Big Al became good friends with my dog Sabu, and lived with him, outside in my backyard, in an old army blanket under the dog house. He knew the sound of my truck motor, and every night when I got home from work, he would charge out from under the doghouse, making that boop-boop-boop sound that guinea pigs make, and I would pick him up and pet him and Sabu, who was also excited to see me. It made me feel like I was somebody important.

Larry was more sedate than Sabu or Big Al. He was a very mellow lizard and not given to displays of affection.

The best part was that in Jenny’s classroom, if the students were up to date in their work, during free periods, they could go back to the nature corner and get Big Al, or Larry, out of their houses, and put them on the desk in front of them, and pet them. I am not sure that petting a lizard actually does anything, but Larry was happy to sit there in the circle of the kids arms and let them fuss over him. And many years of kids left 4th grade with no fear of lizards, and a better concept of how to treat animals. It was a win-win.

Some folks say that when you get to heaven, all your past animal friends rush out to greet you with joy. 

That is a concept that I can get behind.