I had a voicemail from the school nurse during my lunch break. Ethan was sent home ill. Picking up his tray and walking it toward his table in the cafeteria this afternoon, Ethan puked on his lunch.
Ethan is a kid with an unusually weak stomach. He pukes when he’s upset, he pukes when he’s happy, he pukes when I ask him to eat three bites of spinach, goddammit, before he can leave the table. It’s no wonder he feels such kinship with Pablo.
When I picked him up from my mother’s this evening, completely recovered, I asked him what the other kids did when he threw up on his lunch tray. Nothing, he said.
I call bullshit. We all know that kid who puked in school. Worse, we remember their names. Twenty years later we remember their names, where we were, what we were doing.
Mikey Baumgardener — yes, you who sat next to me in 1st grade, who horked chocolate chip cookies onto Mrs. White’s floor that was swiftly covered with green sawdust while we were ushered outdoors for an extra recess — this one goes out to you. I’m only kind of sorry for bringing this up whenever it struck me over the course of our educational careers. At least you weren’t the lab partner my snake pooped on in biology class, man, because that was effing funny. I think about that at least once a week.
This remembrance also goes out to Ethan, for whom this event will be the bane of elementary school memories until graduation.
You are that kid, son. Own it.
My school had orange sawdust stuff. And the girl’s name is Stacy. It stunk so bad.
Poor Ethan!
Hans Kim, 3rd grade, puked all over Kim Crossen’s desk. It was pink.
Can he get through a conversation with Wendy Testerburger?
Oh, and in the Clarke family we tell and retell the story of the Christmas Eve when one of my sisters puked up something green, and my other sister responded by puking up something red. Festive!
Well, I may be extra-special braindead, because I remember some vomiting, but not who did it.
I got away with secretly peeing in the first grade. The teacher wouldn’t let me go. They thought the radiator was leaking. HA! I rule!
I puked on the bus in second grade, all over my math textbook.
It swelled up hoooooge.
It’s always worse to pee your pants. On a fifth grade field trip, Troy Hall peed his pants in his mother’s car, just as the light changed from red to green.
Until we graduated from high school, he was fondly known as “Troy pees when the light turns green.”
That was me in my 6th grade English class… as if middle school wasn’t painful enough. At least I didn’t have it as bad as my friend Rachael… she threw up cafeteria pizza all over some girls hair who was sitting in front of her, she actually made her run out of the room crying. Ask Chef about this… he may vaguely recall it.
I have to ask myself what is worse, being the girl who puked in class (the one who gets to go home because she’s sick), or the girl who got puked on(and has to endure the looks and finger pointing for the rest of the day/school year)? I know I will never forget her:)