Had a bad day again...

Can you think of a bad day you had in elementary or middle school?  Two specific days come to mind for me.

1)  4th Grade:  In the Acuff household, unless you were ACTIVELY vomiting or had a fever documented by my dear mama, you went to school.  On this particular day, my stomach hurt.  A lawt.  But since I had not yet vomited, my dear mama (who was used to kids making up ailments since I was the youngest of four kids) sent me off to school.  I don't know how long I was at school before I got sick.  I remember telling the teacher I didn't feel well.  She told me to sit down at my desk and put my head down, so I did.  She also told me if I needed to run to the bathroom at any point, to just raise my hand and she'd let me go.  As I sat in class, everyone else doing some sort of school like activity, I very suddenly got the feeling I was going to throw up.  You know how when you're a kid, you can't seem to recognize this feeling more than 0.2 seconds before it actually occurs?  That's what happened this day.  I quickly raised my hand, the teacher waved me out, mouthing "Go! Go!"  I only made it to the door of the classroom before I stopped, realized I wasn't going to make it ANYwhere, turned to left and threw up in the trashcan by the door.  Twice. 

You can imagine how well this went over with my compassionate classmates. 

"EWWWWWW!!!"

"GROOOOOSSSS!!!"

"BARFING BETTY! BARFING BETTY!!"

This was in the day and age of garbage pail kids...the grosser version of cabbage patch kids.  Apparently there was one named Barfing Betty.  And if there wasn't, my classmates convinced me there was now.

Thankfully, I got to go home and didn't have to stay at school to further humiliate myself.  But the damage was done for that year...

(I don't blame you for this bad day Momma, I don't.  I will probably have the same standards when my kids start school.)

2)  6th Grade:  I pulled a ligament in my knee skiing and had my leg in a cast for several weeks.  That wasn't the bad day-part, though.  The first day I went back to school, that was a bad day.  Just trying to get up and get ready for school and negotiate the stairs in our house (there were MANY, MANY stairs in that on-base house in Carlisle, PA), it was overwhelming to me.  I remember my dad helping me out to the bus stop (right in front of my house), trying to put a hat on my head and help me zip up my coat. It was February in Pennsylvania.  It was cold.  Hats and coats were appropriate attire. That didn't keep me from feeling mortified that he put a hat on my head (duh..that would mess up my hair!) and when he zipped up the coat, the zipper broke so that above and below the zipper was unzipped, held together only at the little zipper itself.  I started to cry.  Sixth grade is cruel for anyone, especially if you don't look just like everyone else and wear the right clothes and such.  And here I was, looking like frumpy-mcfrump-pants with a broken zippered coat, now-flat hair because of the hat, and a mismatched outfit because nothing that really went together would fit over my big ole cast on my leg.  Dad kept telling me "You'll be alright! You'll be alright!"  as if he said it peppy and frequently enough, I might believe him.  Eventually the bus came, I got on it, tears and all, and headed off to school. 

(I don't blame you for this bad day, Dad, I really don't.  I did not enjoy my 6th grade year at all...the kids were cruel.  That's not your fault.)

**As a side note...just writing this has made me a little twitchy, revisiting icky memories.  Tomorrow, something peppy-er, I promise!