Just Another Day

Most days I am stable and in control of my emotions, but that day was different.

The morning started out just like any other, breakfast and a quick ride to school. My school was being redone, so we were at a temporary school. The principal called it a holding school, but I would have called it a rundown old building. The doors all squeaked and the fluorescent lights blinked in and out at random. It smelled of new paint and detergent, but no amount of TLC could disguise the musty, sweat infused rooms. I imagined it was the perfect setting for a horror movie. My friend, Miles, liked to joke that it was a detention facility for troublemakers. Needless to say, it was not an inspiring place.

My always dependable aide, Jasmine, usually waited for me out front, but on that day she was nowhere to be found. Where was she? My heart began to press through my chest. I felt the anxiety rise up through my body, like a cord wrapping itself tightly around my thoughts. My mom squeezed my hand, trying to offer reassurance. It was lost on me. I forced my feet to move.

As we entered the building, the woman in the office called out, “Jasmine is out sick today.”

Those five words slayed me. How was I going to survive the chaos of fifth grade without her calming presence? Jasmine read my mind. I only had to type a few words for her to know what I wanted. She knew all my fears, including the auto flush toilet. People never understood my inner struggles. I depended on Jasmine to be my interpreter. What was I going to do?

My inner was interrupted by the arrival of the principal. Could this day get anymore stressful, I thought. The principal was a nice woman, but she made you feel like standing up straighter. She reminded me of a nurse, who was always friendly, but kept a bunch of needles in her pocket. My anxiety shot up one hundred percent.

“Hello Harry, how was your weekend?”

It sounded so innocuous. Why then did I feel like it was a KGB interrogation? My mom whipped out a keyboard and stuck it in front of me. Was I really being asked to respond? My world was spinning and they wanted me to answer some silly question. I tried to get my thoughts together. Slowly, I began to type, “can’t think.”

Instead of a sympathetic reassurance, the principal just took my words as having no meaning. “Ok maybe you will think of something later.” Then she abruptly turned to reprimand some first graders for running in the halls.

I took the opportunity to go hide in the corner. My anxiety spread to my mom like a bad virus. She shifted uneasily from side to side. Her face reflecting my inner turmoil. We both just stood there like martyrs in a Greek tragedy.

Eventually, another aide from the building appeared. She was not unfamiliar to me, we often shared a class. However, she was the complete opposite of Jasmine. She always felt the need to hover beside me. Don’t get me wrong, I need a lot of help at school, but nothing shuts up a bunch of kids like an authority figure. Trust me, no one wants to be stuck in that group for lunch and recess. This just made me feel more alien than usual.

In a perky voice she asked, “Are you ready to go Harry?”

Accidentally I knocked over my lunchbox, spilling the contents all over the floor. Ugh...I tried to salvage my french fries, but mom is not a believer in the three second rule.

She took the sack from me. “You will just have to survive sans fries. But we can get a treat after school. How about Starbucks?”

Mom was good. She knew how to get me to do things. I have a serious Starbucks addiction. I love Very Berry Hibiscus Refreshers, Fruity, yet tangy, and loaded with caffeine, they are my downfall.

I managed to get the rest of my gear together without incident and followed the aide down the long hallway to the portables. You may wonder what a portable is. They are trailers. The school tries to portray them as portable classrooms, but in reality they are just trailers. The acoustics are awful. You can hear everything that goes on around the room. For someone like me, that has heightened hearing, it feels like you are in a giant human pile up. Words are strewn around like bodies and debris.

My desk was in the corner, next to my friends. They looked upon our arrival, like the arrival of the plague. Like I said, kids hate to be stuck with authority figures. My friend, Miles, gave me a sympathetic pat on the arm. He knew how hard it was for me to be there without Jasmine.

We settled in without incident. But just as I started to relax, a horrible, shrieking noise filled the room.

“Fire drill,” called out my teacher.

I wondered, did this qualify as torture? Doing something outside of the routine, at school, is extremely difficult for me. I rely on order to help me stay focused. Fire drills are definitely not routine. Sometimes you really have to wonder about karma. I thought, maybe I should ’t have stolen an extra piece of pizza at dinner last night.

As the class piled out into the crowded walkway, I felt the food in my stomach start to revolt. At first, it was just a rumbling, but then it was a full-on hurl alert. Jasmine could usually tell from my expression when a trip to the bathroom was in order. The aide however interpreted my discomfort to be caused by the loud noise, and therefore stuffed my IPad headphones on me. While they did help with the noise, they could not stop what was to come… My new shoes were soon covered in throw up. The aide looked horrified. Passing first graders were laughing hysterically.

When you throw up at school you have to go to the nurse’s office. It is the only place scarier than the principal’s office, machines line the walls and in the center of the room is large hospital bed. As a general rule, I try to avoid all things doctor related. So being sent to the nurse’s office was far from my idea of fun. I tried to linger in the hallway, but the nurse was most adamant that I come in. Of course, she knew from past interactions not to ask to take my temperature. Instead, I sat in a chair next to the window and tried to imagine myself at the beach.

My mom typically does errands while I am at school. That day, she was at the grocery store. This was important because she spends a long time there. I once went with her and almost passed out from fatigue. So when she got the call that I was sick, she was in the labyrinth of aisles with a full shopping cart. It took her 46 minutes to come and rescue me. I know the time exactly because I was watching the clock. When she did arrive, I was practically spinning.

On the ride home, my mom tried to do the cheer me up thing. “It was probably too chaotic in the hall for many people to notice...I doubt anyone even remembers this tomorrow.”

Yeah right, I thought. I was going to be, “that kid that hurled up during the fire drill,” for the next month.

When we got home, I just stayed on the front steps, reliving my horrible day. Sometimes life seemed so unfair. I mean, this had to have been a conspiracy against me. But just when I thought that life would never get better, my mom came out with a bowl of popcorn and a can of soda. She sat down and squeezed my hand and we sat silently, listening to the birds.

Eventually, she asked me, “Did you spend anytime in class today?”

“Five minutes tops.”

“Well, that is four minutes more than I hoped for,” she joked. “Loved the dramatic exit, James Bond has nothing on you Harry.”

In spite of my bad mood, I laughed. I thought about how funny it was, that in the span of a day you can experience so many differing emotions. I had gone from relaxed to panicked to embarrassed to sad, and now I was laughing. It was impossible to stay the same.

The next day at school, there was Jasmine. Just like usual. She laughed when I told her about the fire drill and the incident in the hall. She acted as if it were no big deal. When we got to the classroom, some people did laugh, but my friends came to my defense. They made it out like I was lol some kind of hero for grossing out the first graders. Soon though, all the attention was on Social Studies and a pop quiz in English. At the end of the day, I wasn’t even thinking about my bad day anymore.

It is hard to be present and still realize that every day is only that, a day. Messy, imperfect and unique, each day is different. My bad day was someone else’s awesome day. Tomorrow might be another bad day too, but it will be just a day, and I will survive it too.