In the days preceding her ninth birthday, Janie’s mother teased her, “You’re going to LOVE your birthday present! Oh, but I can’t tell you what it is because that would ruin the surprise!” Every year her mother repeated the same routine: buy gift, wrap gift and tease Janie about the gift for several days before her birthday. Janie wished that just once her mother would buy her something cool like a chemistry set, a telescope or an ant farm.

The ant farm was definitely out. Her mother hated ants, believing them to be the first sign of impending structural collapse. According to her mother, ants could turn an entire two-story house into a pile of sawdust within weeks of their arrival. Janie couldn’t count the number of times that her father had been forced to pour gasoline down every hole in the yard that even remotely resembled an ant hole. Then there were the “ants in your pants” stories, which her mother strategically told whenever Janie asked for an ant farm. Janie wasn’t buying it. There was no way she would ever believe that ants can actually eat an entire pair of underwear, leaving nothing behind but the day of the week. If that were the case, she imagined what a pleasure it would be to stuff those dumb, pink Thursday underwear that her mother bought for her into the nearest ant hole. If the ants didn’t obliterate them, surely her dad would finish them off with his can of gasoline.

Nope, there wasn’t a chance in the world that Janie’s birthday gift was going to be cool.

Janie was a tomboy with a capital “T”.  It was 1972 and her mother complained that she should begin acting like a lady, insisting that “nice girls don’t wallow around in the mud looking for mud puppies.”

Mud puppies were a prehistoric-looking version of a salamander and very difficult to catch. Did her mother have the slightest clue just how much mud and pond gunk she had to sift through to find one? No, her mother was clueless about nature - so clueless in fact that the previous summer she had called an exterminator about the snakes in her flower garden, only to be informed that the “snakes” were actually earthworms. Her mother simply had no capacity for science and she would never be cool.

On the afternoon of her birthday party, Janie’s mother announced that this birthday present was going to be spectacular!

Janie’s friends began to arrive for the party. The table was decorated with plastic Donny and Marie birthday tableware and her gifts were piled in the corner of the living room. Janie’s heart began to race in anticipation as she wondered what cool stuff was waiting for her in the bow-embellished packages.

After eating cake and ice cream, Janie’s mom announced that it was time to open her gifts, instructing her to open the gift that she had gotten for her last. With that, her mother winked, rubbed her hands together and smiled that kind of goofy, jagged smile that appears on the faces of people who think they’ve done something extraordinarily brilliant.

Janie’s friends had gotten her some cool stuff. Renee bought her a bug net and Mindy bought her a kaleidoscope.

The very last gift was the one that her mother had been teasing her about for the past week and a half. As she reached for it, her mother nervously lurched forward, grabbed Janie’s hands and stammered, “Oh Janie, this is gonna be good!”

It was a big box and it was heavy. Ant farms were plastic, so she knew what it wasn’t. She ripped the wrapping paper off of the box and opened it. It was a small aquarium. This was closer to cool than her mother has ever gotten! She was puzzled by what she saw next. The bottom of the aquarium was lined with a thick layer of grass. A few small twigs were positioned at various angles on top of the grass. A jelly lid sat in the corner, presumably to be used as a water dish. Janie was thrilled. THIS was indeed a cool gift. Then as she looked inside, she noticed a brown, cylindrical object similar in shape and appearance to a butterfly’s cocoon.  Her mother shook, rubbed her hands together and asked, “Isn’t this cool, Janie? It a habitat and everything that you need is in there. You can take care of the cocoon and when it hatches, you will have a beautiful butterfly!” She went on, using words like “pupate” and “metamorphosis.” Janie couldn’t believe her ears. Her mother had actually just used scientific terminology! Janie was incredibly pleased but she felt an enormous lump in her throat as she exclaimed, “Mom, this is so cool! Thank you!”

Later that evening as Janie sat in her bedroom staring into the aquarium, fantasizing about the creatures she might possibly keep in her new habitat, she felt the lump return to her throat.

How could she ever possibly explain to her mother that the cocoon she had given to her for her birthday was actually just an abnormally large squirrel turd? "Aside from the turd, this had been the best birthday ever. Some things are better left unspoken,” she concluded.