I found this kid’s book report on the ground. The thing that gets me most is the spelling. Poor spelling always gets me hot, and I can’t seem to let it slide.
unforgivable
It all started in first grade. We were given ten spelling terms to learn each week, on Friday we got tested on those ten terms.
I spelled well.
I always got 100% perfecto
The teacher would write things in big, beautiful, curvy red cursive letters…nice things like; Bravo!… Magnificent!… Super-Duper!…Marvelous!
I took great pride in my spelling ability. It was easy.
Until…
I woke up one Friday morning feeling nauseous. As soon as I climbed out from under the covers I threw up on the beige carpet in the center of my bedroom floor.
It wasn’t regular puke. It was foamy.
When I opened the door
to go tell my mom
I was sick
the dog came in and licked it up.
I told her what happened, but she wouldn’t listen. She didn’t believe me.
She said:
“Go get dressed and come to breakfast, or I am going to spank you.”
She meant it.
At breakfast I didn’t eat anything, which was unusual for me. There were blueberry muffins, sausage biscuits, and cereal to choose from, a truly righteous spread. Blueberry muffins were my favorite. My sisters and I used to fight over who got to eat the last one, but not on that particular Friday morning. I couldn’t eat, but I was extremely thirsty. I drank about 40 oz. of grape juice. I know this because we had extra-large cups, bigger than standard 12 0z. cups, these were the 20 0z gluttony glasses. I poured, and chugged three big gluggers of juice before my mother cut me off. I was so thirsty.
I forgot I was sick until I got on the bus. I felt queasy, hot and cold all at the same time. I made it to school without heaving forth any illness, saving the bus driver from having to bust out the kitty litter and the Lysol™, keeping the kids from catching the bug.
I made it to class, and first thing, the teacher told us to take out a single sheet of tablet paper for the spelling test. I wrote my name in the upper right hand corner of the page. She called out the words, one at a time. I scribbled them down before she even finished saying them. I couldn’t understand why some of the other kids took so long. They took forever. Word #10, and “Whenever you finish: double-check your answers, remember to write your name on top, and turn your papers over on your desk.” she said as she walked around collecting the tests.
The teacher’s aide checked the tests and put stickers on them while we did show and tell. I loved show and tell. I would usually get up in front of the class and make up all kinds of great lies, but I wasn’t feeling well, so I just sat there, silently listening to this one particularly slow kid show and tell his Teddy Ruxpin, I wondered what would happen if i put my sister’s ac/dc tape in it. I wondered if Teddy’s lip syncing motor mouth could keep up with highway to hell.
When the teacher’s aide had finally decorated the last quiz, she walked around and set them back on all the kid’s desks face-down. When I got mine, I turned it over everything changed.It did not have 100% with the googley eyes in the double zeros and the smiling mouth with the flapping tongue hanging out of it.There were no stars or stickers. It said: Good Job
I was stunned.
“There must be some mistake!?” I thought to myself.
The first thing I noticed was the X. There had never been an X anywhere on it before. Indeed, there was a mistake, a big fat one. It was my big fat one!This time was different.There was a big red X on top of the number 9. next to the word PURPLE. I had misspelled a word! I couldn’t believe it!
I had rushed through it.
I had forgotten the R.
The paper said: PU PLE!
I wrote PU PLE instead of PURPLE!
i was crushed.
I felt terrible. I didn’t know what else to do, so I raised my hand and(holding back a ton of tears) asked to be excused to the bathroom, please?
I went into the little restroom. As soon as I shut, and locked the door behind me, a slow moan that began in the bottom of my belly started to rise, and when it got into my throat I choked, phlegm and snot shot out of my face in stringy strands following my short little hyperventilating panic breath, loud crying, and unpreventable tears. I don’t know how long I stayed in there…it seemed like forever.
After some time, I stopped crying. I splashed some water on my little pink face, and cleaned myself up a bit. All the sudden I felt really thirsty, and hot, and I really didn’t care anymore about the test, or the fact that all the other kids had certainly heard me boo-hooing. I was just thirsty, so I opened the door, walked out of the bathroom towards my desk in the middle of everything, then suddenly projectile vomited nearly forty ounces of dark, purple, grape smelling liquid onto the white linoleum floor.
