3rd grade

I was in Mrs. H’s class when I was in third grade. I remember the year for two reasons: 1. I was in the play Annie and on a certain day all of us in the play wore these shirts advertising the play. Mrs. H had all of us stand in front of the class and tell them. It was bad enough I had to be on stage getting slapped by ‘Annie’ every night, I now had to stand in front of my friends and tell them to come see me get hit by a girl.

The other reason I remember that year was because of the time I almost got medivac’d from campus. For those of you unfamiliar with the 80s, during that decade children had flat desks that on top had pencil boxes. The pencil boxes were at least 8 inches long and had everything but a kitchen sink in them. In them were pencils, crayons, colored pencils, highlighters, tacks, tissue paper, a small ruler, duct tape, a spare wrench, a map to the buried treasure in your parents’ back yard, stickers, a spare change of Batman printed underwear, lollipops, and that white putty stuff that can stick to anything. (Okay – so maybe not all of that. Most kids didn’t have lollipops in theirs.)

On one day, Mrs. H was gone and Mrs. W was there (who also happened to be my den leader and Sunday school teacher – just couldn’t get away from that woman.). As we were preparing to understand the rise and fall of economical cycles – or was it fractions – Danielle knocked Meagan’s pencil box over. It crashed to the floor and the contents scattered. I thought (and still do) that Meagan was nice so I bent down to help pick up the stuff. As my hand came down it landed right on a tack. I managed to not scream, but I did rush up to Mrs. W and show her. I was sent to the office to have it removed. (I think I should mention right now that prior to this event I had had 4 tumors, 7 surgeries and was on a weekly blood test schedule where I got poked and forced to bleed my own blood every week. I’m not diabetic but that would have been an easier explanation to people)

In the office I was escorted back to see the nurse. She tried to get me to let her pull it out. I refused. I knew it was going to hurt. She brought in others and they tried to convince me it wasn’t going to hurt and that it should just come out. What type of idiot did they take me for? David E had a nail go through his foot earlier in the year and they had to operate and put him in a cast. And that was only a nail. This was a TACK!! There was no way I was letting any one but a trained medical official pull this out and I wanted the helicopter on stand by.

It just happened to be that day was the day the fire department came to inspect the buildings. In walked the same fire fighters that Mrs. W had had us meet on the firehouse tour the previous week. I felt they were qualified enough. So in came the nurse, to hold my hand and I let the firefighters remove the tack. Much to my surprise, it didn’t hurt a bit. However, they decided they needed to make it bleed and that part hurt. I cried.
After a brief pep talk from the firefighters I was sent back to class. During the pep talk they told me that they had the helicopter warming up and it turned out that we just didn’t need it this time.