Recently we moved to a brand new, built from the ground up, clinic. It’s a state of the art building, and has almost everything you could ever want in a clinic. The only thing that is not new is that fact that people are still going into the refrigerator and eating other people’s lunch. It was soon after we moved into the new building that someone went in and ate my leftover pizza that I had brought in for lunch.

The stealing of the lunches doesn't end there. The other day I walked in the break room and I saw the following note:

 

We ran as dirt clogs fell from the sky, exploding on the ground around us, some of them finding their target causing red welts to appear as if by magic on each of us. We were running over each other when my cousin who we simply called “Boy” fell over a big bag of onions that one of my uncles had brought from a farmer on one of his trips through the back roads of Texas. It was a huge bag of onions, more onions than any person or family for that matter could ever eat in a lifetime, but we weren’t going to eat them. We had found a new weapon and once we modified them we would have a super-weapon

My cousin, “Boy” didn’t hurt himself when he fell over the bag of onions, but the red, mesh bag they were in split, spilling huge yellow onions across the carport. It was then that my cousin, Dorothy, who was the pretty one in our little group of misfits picked up an onion and threw it at JC. She may have been the pretty, girly one but boy could Dorothy throw. She could throw a ball like a boy and she could fight like one too. The onion splattered all over the floor in front of JC spraying him with onion juice and little pieces of onion some of which may have landed in his eyes because it looked like he had begun to cry. In all the years I had known him, I never saw JC cry until that day, so I imagine it was the onion juice that made him cry, but even so we still laughed. He rubbed his eyes and he cried harder - we laughed harder. I don’t know who actually came up with the idea for what we did next. I’d like to think that it was me because I like to think that I was and still am the misunderstood genius of the group, but I’m pretty sure that it was one of my other cousins who came up with the idea.

“You boys find the bottles and then do what you got to do.” Sara ordered as she pulled out a huge switch blade knife from her pocket. Now that I think back on it, it may not actually have been a huge switch blade knife but more like the little file thing that comes with a fingernail clipper. She picked up an onion and cut out a cap much like she was carving a pumpkin for Halloween.

We didn’t have to be told what to do, we knew what had to be done and we did it. We each took a bottle from my grandfather’s recycling can and went behind the big tree. We were bad but we still had our dignity. We weren’t going to show our penises to the girls, we were still too young for that. We pulled them out and began to piss into the bottles, each of us trying to fill them up. That was our little machismo way of determining who the Alpha male would be in the group since we were all pretty close in age.

“Have a Coke and a smile,” I said holding up my Coke bottle that was a little more than halfway filled with the warm yellow liquid. I smiled a little smile and I could feel the evil glint in my eye because I knew   what we were going to do next was bad and deep down I liked being bad. Hey, I’m the grandson of southern Baptist preacher – there is a bad streak in me.

We all laughed when “boy” filled his bottle and still had to pee. He peed into my grandmother’s rose bushes, that would be the thing that would later get us into more trouble than actually throwing piss filled onions at the enemy would.

“He’s full of piss.” My cousin Ruben said.

“That’s not all he’s filled with,” my cousin Patricia said. “He’s full of shit most of the time.”

We all laughed because at that point of our lives it was funny whenever anyone said the word “shit.”

The younger kids were tasked with the chore of filling the onions with the warm urine and putting the caps back on them to make sure nothing spilled until they found their target.

It was our turn to sacrifice one of our own. My little cousin Eddie walked out into my grandma’s yard and started prancing around on the ground singing at the top of his lungs:

“JC is gay
He throws like a girl
He fights like one too
And he cries like one, boo, hoo, hoo.”

When that didn’t work we sent out my cousin Velinda who had what called a “white girl” voice. We never told her she had a “white girl” voice and she probably never knew it either, until she reads this. What it means is that her voice would change when she talked to grown-ups or people in authority, so that to us she sounded more sarcastic, but the grown-ups thought it was cute. She pointed her butt toward JC’s house and taunted them in her White Girl voice:

“JC and Mark sitting in a tree
First comes love,
Then comes marriage
Then comes Japo in a baby carriage”

That worked. JC and Mark both came running out, their judgment clouded by anger. They didn’t even get close to my cousin Eddie or Dorothy because Sarah was waiting in the shadows for them. She stepped out and let loose with two piss filled onions. Mark got hit on the chest and JC got hit on the side of his face. If I live to be a hundred years old I will never forget the look of shock, anger, and humiliation on JC’s face. I have to admit that when I saw the look on JC’s face I felt bad. We had done something bad, something terribly bad, but it was war and people did terribly bad things in war.

 We weren’t the first and we wouldn’t be the last.

Most of our battles consisted of each of us throwing dirt clogs at each other, but as with every other rivalries in history there came a day when our weapons were escalated and things would never be the same again

This particular war started like most of our other wars before. We were outside playing when we saw Japo walk onto the driveway of his house. He saw us and did the worst thing he could have done. He threw the middle finger at us, laughed, and then ran back under the carport. We were kids and for us throwing the middle finger was the worst thing you could do, it was even worse than saying that your mama was a female dog. Throwing the middle finger was something that adults did to each other, not something elementary school kids did to other elementary school kids. It made us mad, but none of us were as mad as my oldest cousin Sara. I think that even as a kid she had anger issues because she was always beating up someone whether they were enemies, friends, or just family. I know she gave me my share of bloody noses growing up and that sucked big time. You could almost see the steam coming out of Sara’s ears when Japo ran back out and started making faces at us. It was a bad move on his part and I think he realized that when he saw my cousin Sara pick up the dirt clog, but by then it was too late. She threw it as hard as she could. A cloud of dirt exploded as it smashed into Japo’s right thigh. He wasn’t laughing anymore.

Japo fell to the ground and began to cry. We ran out to watch him cry because that’s what we did when we saw the enemy fall and start to cry, that’s when we realized that they had sacrificed one of their own…it was a trap. JC and his rag-tag team came out yelling as they threw dirt clogs at us. The sky became brown as dirt clogs rained down on us and for a second it looked like JC and his team were winning. We ran as dirt clogs fell from the sky, exploding on the ground around us, some of them finding their target causing red welts to appear as if by magic on each of us. We were running over each other when my cousin who we simply called “Boy” fell over a big bag of onions that one of my uncles had brought from a farmer on one of his trips through the back roads of Texas. It was a huge bag of onions, more onions than any person or family for that matter could ever eat in a lifetime, but we weren’t going to eat them. We had found a new weapon and once we modified them we would have a super-weapon

When I was a kid, my arch enemy was a tall, skinny boy who lived two houses away from my grandma’s house. His name was JC. I never knew what the initials “JC” stood for and I really didn’t care, all I cared about was destroying JC. I don’t know when or even how we became enemies. We just were. I don’t think he even knew what my real name. He only knew me as Peewee, but that was ok because arch enemies don’t need to know your real name, especially when you’re both only eight years old.

It wasn’t that we were two boys that hated each other. We were each a part of a larger group that hated each other. I had my group that consisted of my cousins and myself and he had his group that consisted of his best friend, Mark who also happened to be my friend. When we weren’t having wars Mark and I would hang out on account of our mothers were good friends. I have to admit that when we threw dirt clogs at each other I would intentionly try to get as close to hitting Mark as I could without actually hitting him and I suspected that he did the same when he threw dirt clogs at me. Aside from Mark and his other friends, JC’s team also consisted of his freaky little brother.

We were kids, so we weren’t politically correct at that time. I don’t think most people were. It was a time when people said what was on their mind and didn’t care about the repercussions or about hurting anyone’s feelings. Things were the way they were, and that was that. We didn’t even know what political correctness was. All we knew was that according to our grandfather the Japanese  were the enemy because they bombed him and his friends in a far-off land called Pearl Harbor many years before any of us were born, and since JC’s brother had little, slanted eyes and looked Japanese we called him “Japo” and he was the enemy.

Most of our battles consisted of each of us throwing dirt clogs at each other, but as with every other rivalries in history there came a day when our weapons were escalated and things would never be the same again


To be continued...

As most of you who follow me on facebook know, Tuesday was wing night – every Tuesday is wing night. Most times the conversation starts with catching up on what went on during the week and then the talk can turn to anything at all. Last wing night the conversation took a sudden turn when my friend David asked, “have you guys ever heard of ‘butt chugging and vodka tampons’?”

I looked at him as my brain tried to process what he had just said, after thinking about it and coming to the only conclusion that I could come up with, I asked, “Is that when you lay on your stomach and someone puts a bottle of vodka in your butt?”  

“No,” He said not even surprised at my answer. David has known me for so long that I don’t think anything I say or do surprises him anymore.  “A vodka tampon It’s when you take a tampon and soak it in liquor and then you shove up your butt.”

The first thing that went through my mind was what the hell are kids thinking these days? Sticking a tampon up you butt to get drunk? I don’t know which visual was worse; laying on a table with a bottle of vodka sticking out from between your butt cheeks or shoving a liquor soaked tampon up your ass. I shook my head lightly like an etch-a-sketch trying to rid my brain of both visuals.

“You’re kidding,” Tamika, a former co-worker and friend, who had joined us for this particular wing night took a sip of her drink and said. “You’re making that up.”

At that point her high school age daughter and the foreign exchange student she is hosting excused themselves and went to the rest room. 

“You can youtube  it” David said as he chugged on his beer.  For the record, he wasn’t butt-chugging his beer, he was just chugging like any regular person would – through his mouth, not through his butt. Although at one point during the night he said he was having his last drink and acted like he was going to pour it in his butt.

“Hey, the girls took off suddenly” Tamika said a little concerned, “You don’t think they’re doing it. Do you?” 

I sucked the meat off a chicken wing, took a drink from my iced tea, wiped my mouth, turned to her and said the first thing that came to mind, “if she farts and it smells like vodka, then that means she’s butt chugging.” We all laughed.

"Why would anyone do that?" She asked, trying to see if she could see her daughter and the foreign exchange student through the door that lead to the restroom.

“It's supposed to make you feel intoxicated quicker,” David explained. “The alcohol doesn’t go through your stomach, so it doesn’t go through the acid. It goes straight into your system, so you get drunk right away. If you’re at work you wouldn’t be able to smell the alcohol on your breath.” 

“but, wouldn’t they be able to smell it coming out your butt? Plus you'd be squirting vodka everytime you took a step."

“Whose going to smell someone else’s ass?” David looked at me, maybe I could surprise him afterall, because he had the surprised, disqusted look that people tend to get when they talk to me for any long period of time.  

“Who would even think to do that?” Tamika asked. "I mean who was the first person to take a tampon and decided to soak it in liquor and then shove it up their butt?"

David looked at me, “You should make a Youtube tutorial on butt-chugging and vodka tampons.” 

“Yeah,” I said pretending I was holding up a glass of spiced rum with a tampon in it. ‘I have a super absorbent tampon that has been soaking in Captain Morgan for the past 12 hours. You take the tampon and shove it up your anus so you have the captain in your ass.”

“Do you even know what a tampon is?” David asked. “You don’t need to soak it for 12 hours. You just put it in the glass and it soaks up the liquid.” he made a soaking sound with his mouth that I wouldn't even know how to type here. 

Tamika asked, “How do you know that?’

“Once, when I was younger,” he began. “My buddies and I put tampons in our mouths to see who could keep it in the longest.” 

I turned to Tamika, “that was before we were friends, I never put a tampon in my mouth.” Looking at David I asked, “Did you win?”

“No, but it soaks up all your saliva and you get…”

Tamika cut him off, “cotton-mouth.” She laughed. At that point her youngest daughter and the German Exchange Student came back to the table. Tamika looked at her daughter suspiciously, “You’re not doing it, are you?” 

“Doing what?” Her daughter asked.

“Butt-chugging a vodka tampon.” 

“Eeewwww,” she made a face like she had just stepped in dog poo in her bare feet. “No I haven’t even heard of that but it sounds disgusting.” Apparently neither of them were paying attention to the conversation before they went to the rest room.

“It’s when you soak a tampon in liquor and then shove it up your butt.”

“Eeewww.” Both the youngest daughter and the foreign exchange student said at the same time. 

I looked at Tamika and asked, “can you imagine her letter back home? ‘Dear mother and father, you would not believe what the Americans do with their tampons.'”

I have a friend named Jesse who seems to notice the strangest things and has the strangest ideas. The other day we went to eat at In-N-Out when he began to tell me about the crew.

“Did you notice how at every In-N-Out there are a bunch of white people working?” He said as he took a sip of his root-beer.

“Huh?” I asked. “You’re strange.” I hated to get pulled into these kind of ‘Jesse conversations’ but I knew that I was about to be sucked into this one. “What are you talking about?”

He began his explanation “Every time I go into an In-N-Out hamburger place I always see a whole crew of tall, young, white people working there with the exception of one black person.”

I looked at the employees and he was right. The crew consisted of one black guy and a bunch of white kids. I started to laugh. “You just made that up.” I said.

He looked at me and his face was serious, “No, I’m not making it up. It’s always the same, no matter which one I go to or when I go. The thing about these kids working there is not the fact that they’re Caucasian, it’s the fact that they’re “white” I’m talking about pale, gothic white except that instead of the dark gothic hair, they have blond hair. It’s like these kids are some sort of tall, white, blond haired breed of In-N-Out crewmembers that are intent on taking over the world - or at least the west coast with deciduous double cheeseburgers with their own “special sauce.” I’m serious, look around.”

“dude, there is something wrong with you,” I looked at him and smiled. “Seriously, there is something wrong with you.”

“At first,” he continued as he chewed on a double double, “I thought the one black employee was there as a way to avoid any scrutiny of the pasty colored crew, but the thing I’ve noticed is that not only is one employee black, but he or she is always really dark black. I’m not talking about a mocha color, beige, or even a brown color - the employee is always really dark. Look, look at the dark employee.”

“I’m not going to turn around and look at anything.” I shook my head.

Jesse continued, “Well, if you look, you’ll see that he’s the one in charge. He’s controlling the whole thing. It’s like he’s pulling the strings of the white crew, telling them what do and when to do it”

“He’s probably the boss and that’s what bosses do.”

As we ate Jesse suddenly got this strange look on his face. He had an epiphany. “I just figured it out.” He said all excited. “the dark employee is so dark because he is some sort of skin-pigment vampire and he’s feeding off the skin pigment of the other employees. That would explain why everyone else is so ghostly white.”

“Dude, you really do need some help.”

For as long as I can remember I've had really vivid dreams. Sometimes it's good, but a lot of times it's not so good because with vivid dreams come vivid nightmares. Sometimes my dreams are just strange. The other night I had this really strange dream. In my dream we were on some sort of road trip probably through the backroads of Texas. I say that because everything was flat - you could see for miles. There weren't any mountains or any bright casino lights. My mother was driving a van, my sister was sitting on the passenger side and I was in back wth my nephew and my niece. We stopped at this little store in a little country town that had a little dinner next to it. I don’t think we even got gas, just some snacks. My niece got some sort of hard candy that she almost chocked on - that was all I remember of the snacks. As we were getting back in the car when we saw a stray cat playing in front of the store. Somehow I knew that my sister had decided that she was going to take it home with us. She was looking for a bag to put it in  when we all saw two small gray and white puppies come around the corner and start playing with the cat.

“oh look at the puppies” my sister says and then looks at my mom and my niece. “we should take them.”

“No” I say. “don’t take the puppies. No one will take care of them.”

At that point my niece starts to choke on the hard candy again and I put my hand out for her to spit the candy out. I look at the slobber covered candy in my hand and think about putting it in my mouth and eating it, but then think better of it and throw it out the window.

“what do you say, mom?” My sister asks putting on he own puppy dog face that she has perfected throughout the years to get anything she wants from my mom and dad. "I promise we'll take care of them."

“I guess  we’re getting new dogs.” My mom says.

"I ain't taking care of anything." I say.

My little eight year old nephew looks at me says, "You know 'ain't' ain't a word"

Even in my dreams someone has to be a smart-ass.

My sister gets off the car but for some reason can’t bring herself to capture the puppies. “there’s too many people, how about we park next to the dinner and I’ll get them when it gets a little darker.”

We park next to the dinner. A really big, dark woman leans out of the dinner window and asks us what she can get for us. I try to tell her that we don’t want anything because we had gotten some burritois from the dinner earlier, but she can’t hear me so my sister gets off and goes to the window.

“I’ll tell her and I’ll ask her about the puppies.”

As my sister gets in line these two big black girls get in line behind her and start talking about some dance at the high school the following week. As my sister is about to ask the lady at the window about the puppies when a Chinese woman walks up and blurts out, “do you have change?” she's holding up a twenty dollar bill. The lady at the window tells her that she doesn’t have any change. My sister holds up some five dollar bills. The Chinese lady pulls out another twenty and my sister looks over to where my mom and I are, then pulls out more five dollar bills. We nod at her as if giving her permission to exchange the money.

I walk into the dinner and buy a can of Coke and start to drink it. As I look outside I see a lot of people suddenly pulling up and I wonder if they are here for the dogs. I know it’s a strange thing to think but that’s what the dream Tony was thinking. I sat my can of Coke down on the counter and walk outside to see what’s going on.

I see the puppies playing in front of the store and notice that everyone else is just sort of making their way into the dinner talking about the economy and how bad it was. I walk by a huge guy with long black hair and a beard and goatee. He’s looking at me with evil eyes in a mean face, as if I had just insulted his mother or something. I was still looking at him when I caught the sight of the high school kid who was a big football player wearing a football letterman jacket. He looked down at me when we ran into each other and he almost knocked me down to the ground.

“I’m sorry sir.” He says and he reaches out his big hands to help steady me and keep me from falling.

I looked up at him. He’s a good head and shoulders taller than me and simply said, “thanks kid.” I walked on and can't help thinking "he called me sir. I'm not old enough to be a Sir"

Through the corner of my eye I see my sister grab the puppies and go back to the van, so I head back into the dinner for my can of Coke because even in dreams a cold Coke is a cold Coke. I notice that my Coke is now hot so I grab a new one and walk out the dinner leaving my hot can of soda there. As I’m walking out the big lady at the window yells out, “I left you a new can of Ice cold Coke as a thank you for waiting around gift.”

I looked back and saw the new, unopened can of Coke next to my hot one “She left me a new coke, but I took one anyway” I said to my mom as we walked back to the van. “Should I go back and get it?”

“No,” my mom says. “You already got one. Don’t be greedy.”

“yeah, you’re right.” I say getting back into the van where my niece and nephew are both playing happily with their new puppies. “besides I’m ready to go.” I look around at all the people filling the dinner. “something about this palce gives me the creeps.”

We drive off in the van and I notice a big white sign with black letters by road that reads, “Pray every day”

The next thing I know I’m standing in the dinner again, but this time it’s full of people. I look around but something is not right. I can see everyone but no one can see me. It’s one of those dream things. I see the big man with the long dark hair and beard and for some reason I can’t take my eyes off him. He looks over to where I am, and for a second I feel as if he can see me, but I know he can’t. I watch as everything suddenly goes into slow motion. The man pulls out a shotgun and aims it at the guy to his left, the guy standing next to me. He fires and blows the man’s chest away. People start to yell and try to run out the door, but they can’t. They are all pushing against the door but the door opens inward and no one wants to move back to open it so they're stuck pushing against each other. The man starts shooting over and over again. He shoots the Chinese lady that is holding the five dollar bills my sister just gave her  right in the middle of her head. One second she’s standing there about to scream, the next her head is blown across the wall of the dinner. The football player tries to run to the window, but the guy turns and fires the shotgun blowing a hole in his back big enough that I could see through it. I see the girl who moments ago was talking about the school dance. She’s screaming, crying, begging for some sort of mercy. There’s a flash of light and the girl is gone. I try to look away but I can’t. I watch as the man kills everyone in the dinner, then sits at the counter where my hot Coke was still sitting. The man begins to eat his final meal which consists of an onion omlet, hash browns and a cup of coffee. He then blew his own head away.

I don't know how I know this but somehow I know that he had come back to the store looking for his beloved puppies and when he couldn’t find them, something inside him snapped and his mind went crazy with rage.

Then…I woke up

We got a call from a patient who wanted his methadone and he claimed that if he didn’t get it then he was going to kill himself. The clerk that received the call did what we are told to do and kept the patient on the phone while getting someone else’s attention, that someone else just happened to be me. I went and found a doctor and nurse to talk to the patient, then I called the suicide prevention section where I work and I got a voicemail. I couldn’t believe it. It had to be a mistake so I called again. I got the voicemail again. I then tried to call the mental health section to see if they could give me some help. I told her that I tried to contact the suicide prevention section but I was put on hold. She put me on hold so she could go see what was going on with the suicide prevention team. She finally came back on the line and told me that the person was not at their desk and she didn’t know where he was, so she tried to help me. The lady on the other end of the phone line asked me if the patient was at our clinic. I told her that the patient was on the phone threatening to kill himself.

She told me, “You need to detain the patient and don’t let him go anywhere until help arrives.”

I told her again that the patient was not at our clinic, he was calling from his apartment and he was going to kill himself if he didn’t get his methadone.

The lady from mental health then said,” Well, in that case you can have him call us here.”
 
I was a bit surprised by that answer. “You want us to hang up with the patient and have him call you?” That was totally against protocol. According to what we’ve been told countless of times – we are not supposed to hang up with the patient until help arrives.

“Yes,” the mental health lady said. “You can hang up and have him call here or he can call after you finish with him.”

I was ready to hang up on the mental health lady because I felt that the patient needed someone with a little more brains than the person I was talking to. “I’m calling 911 and letting them know so they can do a check on him.”

“You can do that too” the lady said.

I hung up on her and immediately called 911.

At this time the doctor was talking to the patient, keeping him on the phone. I called 911 and gave the dispatcher all the information I had on the patient. He asked me for an address and I gave him the one in the system which the doctor confirmed with the patient. The doctor was smooth asking the patient where he was because he had to put the address in the system to order his medications.

“Does he have any weapons?” The 911 dispatcher asked me.

I asked the doctor, who then asked the patient. The patient said he did not have any weapons, but he said he would still find a way to kill himself if he did not get his medication.

The dispatcher asked me once again for the patient’s address. I gave it to him again and he told me that they were having another suicide incident in the same apartment building, so he wanted to make sure it wasn’t the same person. I couldn’t help thinking that I was glad I didn’t live in that apartment complex.

The doctor was amazing in the way he talked to the patient. He kept calm and answered all the questions I passed on from the dispatcher.

The whole thing seemed like something from a movie. I felt like things were going so fast, but at the same time I felt that we were working like team; the doctor, the nurse who was pulling up information from the computer so I could give to the dispatcher, and myself. We were a team that was trying to save this man and any wrong word or bad decision by either of us could cost him his life.

I don’t know that the patient would have actually killed himself or not, but when you’re faced with a situation like that you really don’t want to take any chances. You never know what someone else is thinking or what they are capable of doing.

Later I was told that we handled the situation very well and that we worked well together in relaying information back and forth.

The dispatcher finally told me that a police unit had arrived at the complex and were making their way to the patient’s apartment.

At this point the doctor looked at me and said, “He hung up on me.” I could see the surprise and fear in his face. I felt my heart race as I thought of how we had failed the patient we were trying to help

“The police have arrived and are with the gentleman.” The dispatcher said as I felt a wave of relief go over my body.

I told the doctor and I could tell that he was feeling the same way too. We were both relieved. If nothing else we had potentially saved someone’s life.

The dispatcher thanked me and gave me a number that I could use in case we wanted to find out more about the outcome.

As I hung up the phone I felt good. I felt good because I felt that in some way I had made a difference in someone’s life. Again, I don’t know if the patient would have actually killed himself or not, but it’s good to know that I won’t have to ask myself “What if…”

When I was in elementary school I used to sit next to a girl named Margret. Margret had a problem with her nose, it wasn’t that it was a huge forty year old nose on a ten year old face. The problem with Margret’s nose was that it produced too much mucus, way too much mucus for one person to make. Sometimes she would run the back of her hand across her nostrils to wipe it clean, but most times she would simply use her finger to clean it. She was a nose picker, picking her nose all day long. Once, I picked my nose in class and the teacher made me go wash my hands immediately, but she never said anything to Margret about her nose picking. I guess it was either because she knew that if Margret didn’t pick her nose then her nose would fill with mucus and she would drown on her own boogers. How does a teacher explain to a parent that their kid drowned on their own mucus? I think that the real reason she never said anything to Margret was the fact that Margret was a giant girl who was so mean and tough that the teacher was afraid to tell her anything for fear that she would get beat up by a booger spewing ten year old.

Margret would push her finger so far up her nose that I think at times she would actually touch her brain. I would try to avoid looking at her, but every once In a while I would look over at her and she would be in her little booger world with her finger up his nose, when she saw me looking at her she would slowly pull her finger out. On the end of her finger would be a long slimly booger that would go on forever. I’m sure that if someone were to measure it, it would be some sort of world record. If she saw me looking at her she would one of three things. One thing she would do was swing his finger and the booger would wrap around her finger like tetherball would wrap around the pole when we were on recess. The other thing she would do was stick it under her chair. I would hate to look under her chair because I knew that if I did I would see stalactites of dried boogers under there. The third and most gross of all was that she would eat them.

No one really liked to play with Margret, mostly because she was so mean, but also because her hands were always boogery (I made that word up). The only time anyone really played with her was when we had to, like during PE. I remember one day in PE we had to play baseball and since she was the biggest, meanest kid in the class she was the pitcher and boy could she pitch. She could throw that ball by you and make you look like a little girl trying to hit a fastball.

Although Margret and I sat next to each other we really didn’t like each other. I didn’t like the fact that she was a booger-face and she didn’t like the fact that I called her a “booger-face,” so when she threw the baseball and hit me right on my eye I had a feeling that it was not quite the accident she claimed it was.

I remember standing at home plate waiting for her to pitch the ball and thinking that I wasn’t going to let her strike me out. The first ball came hard and fast. I swung at it with all the strength that was in my ten year old body.

“Strike!” yelled the coach from behind me.

“what do you mean strike?” I asked as I gave him my are you blind look.

“It came over the plate and you swung at it. It’s a strike.” The coach gave me the ‘I’m the authority figure and if I say it’s a strike then it’s a strike’ look.

I tapped the end of the bat on my shoe, something I’d seen one of the professional baseball players do in a game once. I’m sure it didn’t look as cool when I did it as when the pro player did it, but I was a kid – what did I know about being cool?

I got ready for the next pitch and while I still thinking about getting ready the ball flew by me.

“Strike two!” the coach yelled.

“What?” I turned to him. “I didn’t even swing at the ball. How could it be a strike?”

“The ball came right down the center over home plate. It was a good ball and you didn’t swing so it’s a strike. Keep your eye on the ball next time”

I looked at Margret and I was determined not to let her strike me out. I stood there concentrating like I had never concentrated in my life. I wasn’t going to let that booger-face strike me out in front of the whole class. I watched as she pulled her arm back and then threw the ball. I could see the ball coming right at me, getting bigger as it got closer, then I heard the sound of the bat hitting the ball and then something strange happened. Everything went dark and all I could see was a lot of colored sparks shooting in all directions like a firework show on the Fourth of July. It was as the pain ran through me and I fell to the ground that I realized the sound I heard earlier was not the sound of the bat hitting the ball, but it was the sound of my face hitting the ball.

Everyone ran toward me and I thought I heard the coach say, “that’s not what I meant when I said keep your eye on the ball.” I think he laughed a little bit, but I’m not sure that he did or if it was just my imagination.

They took me to the nurses office and put some sort of bag with cold, blue gel on my eye. The nurse asked me to name some of the letters on the eye chart. I laid in the nurses office for most of the day. I don’t know if I was lucky or if I just had a hard head because I didn’t get a huge black eye or anything that would make me look cool. I just had a small bruise over my eye that hurt every time I poked it.

“Hey,” The creepy voice made my blood run cold. I looked toward the doorway and standing there larger than life was booger-face Margret. At first I thought she had come to finish the job and kill me. My mom was going to be so mad because she asked me to take the trash to the curb that morning and I'd forgotten - now I'd never take the trash out because I'd been killed by a booger-face girl - oh man, was my mom going to be mad. ”Mrs. Bostwick  told me to come and say I was sorry.” She ran the back of her hand across her nose wiping away a stream of mucus. She than added, "even if I'm not" and she stuck her tongue out at me.

“I’m okay.” I said. “I hardly even felt it.” I rolled my eyes back in my head and instantly regreted it because it hurt. "Besides," I said,"you throw like a girl."

“Yeah,” she said. “whatever.” I didn’t like the way she said that, but I didn’t say anything else to her, because I wasn't ready to die yet - I still had to take the trash out at home. “Well, I’ll see ya later shortstuff.”

“I’m not short!” I yelled after her.  She would pay for this…I began to plot my revenge

…but, that’s another story.