The Pocket Shirt

The Pocket Shirt 

Laura Fischer

       Excitement was in the air at St. Stephen's.  It was the last Saturday of May and only a few more days until summer vacation.  It was also the afternoon of the annual spring carnival being held on the school grounds to celebrate the end of the school year.  Angie loved the festival almost as much as her students did.  The games, the food, the fun, the comraderie - it all brought back happy memories of  her own school days.  

       Most of the teachers and parents volunteered to work shifts for a few hours at the games and food stands set up around the playground.  Angie's favorite game was the Pick-a-Pocket booth.  She volunteered for it every year.  She liked the game because it was a favorite of the preschoolers and kindergarten students.  And she liked the younger children because for them everything was still new and magical.  She enjoyed seeing their excitement and sharing their anticipation as they tried to guess what treasure would be in the pocket they chose.  

       She also liked the game because it brought back happy memories of when she was a child and her father had been Mr. Pick-a-Pocket at her school carnival.  The pockets in his shirt were full of magic and mystery - at least that's what Angie thought when she was young.    She knew better now.  The magic wasn't real.  They were just pockets and plastic prizes.  She had waited her whole childhood for something wondrous to happen, and here she was at 30 still waiting.

       The game had changed over the years.  Once in more innocent times, Mr. Pick-a-Pocket had been a real person who walked around the school grounds in a hobo-clown costume inviting children to spend a yellow ticket and pick his pocket for a prize.  Now he was just a cardboard cutout of a clown dressed in a flannel shirt  - a shirt decorated with a dozen brightly colored pockets, each containing a different carnival prize.  The physical connection with the clown was gone now, but the little ones had never known any different, so they didn't really care.  Angie cared, but she knew things could never be like they used to be.  

       Angie didn't like the change, but she understood the reason for it.  If only she could turn back time to the trusting, carefree days of her youth.  She wanted to play the game the way it had been played when she was young.  She wanted to to be Ms. Pick-a-Pocket for the day and wear the flannel shirt with many pockets herself.  She knew those days would never return, and it made her sad to think of how fearful and suspicious everyone had become. She was glad the little ones gathered around her booth were unaware of their parents' unspoken fears.

       At last it was time for her break, and Angie headed to the snack stands to get a slice of pizza and a soda.  She noticed a twenty dollar bill laying on the ground.  Picking it up, she wondered how she could ever find the owner.   Stuffing the money in her pocket, she sought out the principal who was selling chances for the drawing to be held at the end of the fair and explained her find.  She handed him the money and suggested that if it wasn't claimed, it could be put with the rest of the raffle proceeds for the school.

       "I can't do that," he said," because the cash in my money box has to match the number of chances I've sold.  What I can do is take the money and give you a drawing ticket.  If someone claims he lost the twenty, I'll send him to you to get the ticket back before I give him the money.  If no one reports the loss, I guess you'll have a chance to win our trip to Hawaii."
       Wouldn't it be wonderful if no one claimed the lost bill and I won the raffle, Angie thought to herself replacing the money in her pocket with the drawing ticket.  Who knows what magic might be found on a singles' cruise to Hawaii.  She returned to the game with an eagerness and expectation she hadn't felt in many years.
       At long last the announcement came over the intercom that it was time for the drawing that would close the festivities.  Angie could hardly contain her excitement.  No one had come to claim the drawing ticket - she still had a chance to win the cruise.  Retrieving the lucky ticket from her shirt pocket, she clutched it tightly in her hand and waited expectantly hoping for the principal to call her name.  Maybe miracles do still happened, she thought.  Maybe magic can still be found in a pocket after all.