The Top 40

Well, I'm glad you asked.

It’s the Sun

When I was in grade school, fourth grade, we had show and tell. This one kid, his clothes never fit him well, I think it was hand-me-downs from the Sally Ann, he made this model of the Solar System. He used a piece of cardboard with nine concentric circles drawn on with a magic marker. He took toothpicks and put one on each ring with a Styrofoam ball on ‘em. Painted different colors, Mars was red, Earth green, the others shades of gray or blue. He tried to make the rings of Saturn with a piece of cellophane, squished it down on the ball, but it looked like a sombrero.
His punch line was when one of the students asked:
“What was that big yellow ball in the middle?”
Well he puffed up like he was giving us the keys to the kingdom and said
“It’s the Sun. That big yellow ball in the middle? It’s the sun”.
OK, so my scale model of the Eiffel Tower made with popsicle sticks and Elmer’s Glue didn’t have the presentation, the patter that went with it. This kid won first place, natch.
So, on to next year, fifth grade. Same show and tell format, I guess the teachers figured let the kids do all the work while they sat in the back row updating their resumes. And here comes this kid, different clothes but you could tell it was him. We all, kept looking at his feet, this guy would sometimes come to school with one boot and one shoe. And he had that by now banged up piece of cardboard with, uh huh, the Solar System on it. And, yeah, the big yellow ball in the middle. The sun. he didn’t win anything this year but he added to his spiel by citing statistics (the miles away from the Sun they were.) he did get Mercury wrong, he said it was to close to measure but he reckoned maybe seventy, eighty miles was about right. He closed his presentation with the rhetorical question “Know what that big yellow ball in the middle is? It’s the Sun. that yellow ball? It’s the Sun.
OK sixth grade. Other schools the kids went to junior high but we were in a small town so we had sixth grade, seventh, eighth.
Here comes show and tell and this kid, Jimmy, brought in the same model of the Solar System, looking decidedly ratty by now, I think we smelled cat piss on a corner of it and some of the planets, er, balls didn’t perch do good on the toothpicks.
“You see that big yellow ball in the middle? It’s the Sun. the Sun. That big yellow ball in the middle? The Sun.
He got through eighth grade somehow and we lost track of him but it was rumored he went in the Army. One day a couple years later I saw him, he was working on a garbage truck for our town. Not the driver, he was the guy walked along side, hoisting the cans into the back of the truck. He got a kick out of throwing the lever, sent the compacting ram in on all the bags and loose garbage. It’s the sun I wanted to shout at him, but nah, he looked happy.