Realm of the Wombat

Char wrote a post about Harriet Tubman, which reminded me of this episode from my youth.

In 6th grade, we were going to do a presentation that was a series of skits on the Civil War. One of the skits was about the Underground Railroad. The girl in charge thought it was literally an underground railroad and wrote the skit under this premise. I asked her if she really thought 1860s engineering was capable of a designing and building a nationwide subway system quiet enough to keep the entire project hidden and unknown to half of the country.

She still didn’t understand.

My only restitution was that from then on, I always put a bit of egg shell in any cupcakes or brownies I made for the class, with the hopes that she would end up eating the piece of shell. This may sound ridiculous, but it was more likely than an 1860s stealth slave-freeing subway system.

Thankfully, the entire performance was quashed before we could perform it in front of the school and parents.