The Bad Day

Before getting into the 'bad day' story I just remembered something from when I was 2 or 3 years old - it involves the 'inky dinky' spider and the water spout:

As a child I was OK with spiders but I had no idea what 'inky dinky' meant - it sure sounded dark and ominous. I also had no idea what a water spout was but I guessed it was probably the drain in the bathtub. So, by my reckoning that nursery rhyme meant that after you let the water out of the tub a dark and ominous spider would come up out of the drain. (I figured that stuff about the rain and sun was just a metaphor...)
The funny thing is that my mom thought that I jumped out of the tub when she let the water out because I was afraid of getting sucked down the drain. Heck - that's just plain silly! I was merely trying to avoid an encounter with some goddam evil spider :-)

And now for the 'main feature'...
I spent a few months in the 3rd grade at Seven Holy Founders before we moved to Philadelphia. I'd been moved to the A-track class so I was not an official dumbass anymore, but (unfortunately) the pretty blond girl had moved away (and life went on)... However I do remember one really bad day:

By the 3rd grade the teachers figured we were old enough to 'hold it' during class, so bathroom trips were not allowed. One morning I forgot to 'go' before school and midway through the first period I simply couldn't hold it anymore - I wet myself.
Luckily I was wearing black slacks so it wasn't blatantly obvious, but when recess rolled around one of the kids asked how come my chair and pants were dripping wet. I told him I had spilled a bottle of apple juice before class, and (strangely enough) a kid I barely knew backed me up - claimed he'd actually seen me spill it... (All I can figure is he had 'been there'.) I don't think my accuser completely bought the apple juice story but at least it provided reasonable doubt :-)

And then my day got worse... I tripped and fell on the playground and tore up my left hand - cuts, abrasions and bits of gravel jammed under the skin. It hurt like h*ll, I couldn't get the gravel out, and I didn't dare tell a teacher because my pants were still soaked. So I spent the rest of the morning sitting there at my desk - cold, wet and injured - just hoping to make it through the day without being publicly humiliated.

After lunch we were out on the playground and one of my friends decided to have some fun with me. He pointed to a nun and said "I'm going to tell her you peed your pants" and walked over to her and started talking. I was about to run and hide, but (as it turns out) he was only telling her about my injured hand. Long story short - the school nurse picked the gravel out with some tweezers, the evidence of my 'accident' dried and I survived the day with my reputation intact.

I'm still not sure if it would have been worse to get caught than it was to spend the entire day scared of getting caught but regardless, I was quite glad when it was all over...