Great Moments in My Life, Part I

No matter how much you'd like to forget them, some things just stick with you.

Here's one of mine.

~~~

Fifth grade. Less than an hour before I was to represent my class in the school-wide (K through 8th) spelling bee.

I was good at spelling, but bad at remaining calm when faced with the prospect of public humiliation in front of my entire school. The number of butterflies in my stomach could have brought an endangered species back from the brink.

I was making small talk with the other contestants, laughing nervously, and watching the clock slowly tick its way toward the moment of my inevitable doom. It got closer and closer to the dreaded time—at any moment, I would have to leave the classroom to go to gymnasium for a pre-bee briefing of the rules.

My stomach churned. I bolted out the door and into the hallway, mistakenly thinking that I could make it to the girls' bathroom.

I was still running when I started to throw up. I fell to the ground (landing in puke, yay!) and continued to vomit. I remember seeing it hit the tiled floor and splashing back up onto my jeans.

When I stopped throwing up, I didn't know what to do. There was vomit everywhere, and it was my fault. I was sick, nervous, humiliated, covered in vomit, and crying. People were staring in shock and awe.

I made my way down the rest of the hallway to the office, darkening the receptionists' doorway like some vomit-covered demon from the depths of hell. Trying to downplay my complete humiliation, I made some sort of terribly understated comment like, "I think I need to go home."

My parents were soon on their way to pick me up. I stood in the office, unable or unwilling to sit down and dirty their furniture, staring down at my puke-speckled blue-and-white tennis shoes.

To complete my abject and public humiliation, the janitor stopped by the office, loudly congratulating me on my record-breaking "splash zone." Everyone else adored him, but oh, how I hated that man.

(Three years later, I won the damn spelling bee.)