4th grade was not my best year. I did not take kindly to my age reaching double digits, recesses go from twice a day to once, or the extreme and sudden lack of Connect 4 in the classroom. Homework actually required more than drawing pictures and for the first time in my ten years of life popularity became an issue. The days of 3rd grade with everyone on equal playing fields were over – we were now in the beginning of a hierarchy and I was shockingly finding myself on the lower end of the totem pole. This was probably not helped by the fact that three weeks into my 4th grade year my optometrist discovered that I could not see five feet in front of my face and gave me ridiculously large gold-rimmed glasses. Also not doing me any favors was the fact that I was extremely clumsy and about an entire person taller than most everyone in my class. Most everyone that is with one exception – a boy we all affectionately, and with good reason, called Moose. His real name was Peter but like the animal he was massive, towering above me in a Ninja Turtles t-shirt and Husky K-Mart jeans. He had gone to a different elementary school than us and was new that year, but right when I saw him it was love at first (blurry) sight. At the time I had gotten sick of obsessing over the super sexy but short boys in the grade above me, and Moose was a welcome refocus of my energy. Of course, he did not exactly seem to feel the same. The only time we ever talked was when we got paired up in class, and my way of “flirting” was to cover the side of my face that was facing him with my hair so that he could maybe not see my glasses, and to adamantly correct his spelling. Apparently, this is not an effective mating call since instead of professing his love to me he tried to kiss my next door neighbor Wendy on the playground.
Just in case you thought being the grammar police in gold rimmed glasses wasn’t enough, the nail in my 4th grade coolness coffin was the fact that my mom had recently become the school librarian. This means that twice a week our entire class went to the library and had to sit and listen while my mom taught us about the Dewey Decimal system and the importance of our imaginations. Now, I was certainly no fashionista in 4th grade – my uniform was pretty much what we have come to know now as “mom jeans”, a turtleneck, and a jazzy vest – but even I could tell that my mom’s “Librarian Outfits” were not going to help me climb the social ladder. A sucker for a theme and a whiz with a sewing machine, she consistently made her own holiday motifed jumpers to wear to school. A shining example in my mind was the Halloween Jumper – worn snugly over an orange turtleneck it was adorned with neon swirls and cheshire cats, falling about 6 inches above her feet so you could be sure to see her halloween socks and sneakers. Thus, thanks to extreme humiliation, Library Class was the only place where my need to achieve went straight out the window. Instead of sitting up front and raising my hand for every answer like usual, I would sit in the back corner and pray she didn’t embarrass me for just 45 minutes. This, however, was an unsuccessful approach, and I was mortified on the daily. For example, at the end of class every day we would all sit and listen while my mom read us Tuck Everlasting, pausing periodically to tell me to stop biting my nails. One day THREE of the fifth grade hotties approached me on the playground – to tell me that my mom had given them detention. My social stock was plummeting and about to get even worse.
One day my teacher introduced a new member of the faculty, Miss Sweet, who would be coming in every Thursday to teach us cursive handwriting classes. As you now know I was obsessed with writing and spelling, so you can only imagine how pumped I was about this. Not only would we get to use those awesome square gel things that fit over our pencils so we hold them correctly, talking about writing would obviously give me more opportunities to “flirt” with Moose. On the first Thursday of handwriting class there was a special skip in my step on the way to school, and I tried to calm my excitement as I made it through morning, lunch, and afternoon recess. Finally, the golden hour came and Miss Sweet showed up at our classroom door. She validated my extreme excitement when the first thing she did was ask us to move our desks in a horseshoe shape, miraculously landing me right next to Moose! I was on cloud nine, nailing those tricky lowercase z’s and even getting to touch Moose’s massive hand as I helped him with his pencil grip. That is, until my stomach started gurgling. Perhaps it was something I ate or the combination of nerves and electricity running through me after being so close to my one true love, but all of a sudden I felt extremely sick. I could tell this was going to be a projectile vomit type of situation and that I didn’t have much time, but being a good student I chose to keep that A in Conduct and raise my hand to go to the bathroom instead of running out. This was a bad decision. Miss Sweet was helping a degent with their cursive and my teacher was out of the room buying popcorn off the snack cart. My hand was waiting in the air with no one paying attention and my stomach was revolting against me, pushing its way up while I kept pushing it back down, praying it would hold out just one more minute. Finally it got to the point where I knew I could wait no longer, and running the risk of getting in trouble for going to the bathroom without permission, I started to get up from my seat. Perhaps it was my bodily shift or the fact that time had just run out, but as I got up something happened that told me this day would not be nearly as wonderful as I had planned. I had been so preoccupied with simply not throwing up that I had forgotten about the other obvious side effects, and before I knew it I uncontrollably let out one of the loudest burps I had ever heard. Covering my mouth with my hand I sprinted as fast as I could out of the classroom, but not fast enough to miss hearing my entire class blame my burp on Moose.
Thankfully the 5th grade class across the corridor had their door closed so none of the hotties could see me running down the hall and throwing up at the same time. I had my hand firmly clasped over my mouth but my projectile prediction had been accurate and it was shooting out the sides all over the hallway and my jazzy vest. I happened to pass our janitor and apologized with my eyes for making his work day that much worse as I made my way to the girls bathroom. Finally I got in there, didn’t even bother shutting the door to the handicapped stall, sat down on the floor and really let loose. To this day I cannot remember another time in my life where vomit came so suddenly and aggressively- I have never felt so sick out of nowhere in my life. I was camped out on the floor planning my will when the secretary, Ms. Bell, who had a legit humpback, came in to check on me because the janitor had told her I was vomiting all over the place. Wanting to get out of there as fast as she could, she told me I could just go straight to the nurse’s office and she would tell my teacher I was sick. This was a great relief to me since that meant I could buy myself some absent time for the class to forget about my Moose-sized public belch. I immediately went to the nurse and laid down with some crackers and a blanket, ready to take a nap and dream that today had never happened. I had just closed my eyes when my mom rushed in, sporting a lovely homemade penguin jumper ensemble, freaking out because she heard I was ill. I thought this was awfully fast since only about 2 minutes had gone by since Ms. Bell had told me she would tell my teacher, and that hump didn’t exactly make for speedy trips around Swasey Central Elementary. I asked how she had heard so fast, and thats when I found out the last straw of hope for me to be cool had been ripped out my 4th grade hands by an unlikely candidate – the school secretary, Ms. Bell. For when she meant she would tell my teacher she didn’t mean that she would trek all the way to my actual classroom to deliver the news in person, not when her calcium deficient finger could just press one simple intercom button to alert him from the comfort of her desk. It could be that she forgot which button belonged to my classroom or maybe she just got lazy – I will never know. All I know is that while I was on my way from the bathroom to the nurse a message came over the intercom to the entire school. A message for Moose, my mom, my little brother in 1st grade, and perhaps most devastatingly, the 5th grade hotties to hear – it was short, simple, and to the point:
“Emily Buck has vomited.”
