Jan 2m 466
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
I used to teach sixth grade in a large middle school. Every year the kids arrived terrified of the usual stuff – lockers with combinations, hall passes, getting lost, and eighth graders. We always tried to ease their fears by making the first week of school very low-key and fun, and we traditionally ended the first week with a big picnic at a nearby park.
This particular year the weather was miserable – hot as a furnace and humid as a rain forest. And on the last day of the first week, when we were supposed to have our picnic, it started pouring down buckets of rain early in the morning and showed no sign of stopping in time for lunch.
But hey, we were pros. And our team had a pretty good budget early in the school year, so we decided to throw a pizza party in our homerooms. No problem. We ordered the pizzas, the kids gathered in the classrooms, the pizzas got delivered, and despite the oppressive heat and humidity, we were having fun.
In my classroom 26 sweaty, sticky, happy kids were finishing up their lunches when a goofy redhead named Dewey (why is it always the gingers??) jumped up on his desk and yelled “Hey, everybody, look at me!”
So we all looked at Dewey.
When he was sure he had everybody’s attention, Dewey slowly raised his hand to his mouth – and jammed his fingers down his throat.
He coughed once, and gagged.
I hollered, “Everybody get out of the room right now!” But it was too late.
Rivers of pizza-colored vomit spewed out of Dewey’s pale face and splattered on his desk and the floor below. The humid classroom air immediately filled with the nauseating stench of Dewey’s recycled lunch.
I started grabbing kids and shoving them out the door into the hallway, but the dominoes had already started to fall. Little Markisha took one look at the hideous mess and puked right on top of it. That triggered similar reactions from four or five other kids.
By the time everybody was out in the hall, the center of my classroom was a lake of vomit. I sent all the sick kids to the bathrooms to clean up, and the rest of us piled into other classrooms.
When Dewey returned from the bathroom, I kept him out in the hall for his moment of retribution. But all I could think of to say was, “Oh my gosh, Dewey – why in the world did you do that?”
Dewey shrugged and grinned a lopsided grin. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve done that a million times before and this was the first time I ever threw up.”
It’s been seven years since I set foot in a middle school. Questions, anyone?
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