According to my principal, I am now officially a teacher. I have been initiated. Or rather hazed. Or perhaps baptized. By vomit. That’s right, I had my first barfer last week. This is how it went:
One of my students, “Adam,” was running fast at recess. Another boy, “Jarrett,” impulsively stuck out his foot as Adam sped by. Adam tripped and hit his head on a piece of wood (no further description of said wood was provided by either boy). Adam is a pretty stoic little kid. After accepting Jarrett’s apology, he went to the office to get some ice for his head. No tears, no whining. The secretary checked him out a bit, asked if his vision was okay, then sent him to class with a two ice cubes in a ziplock bag. Back in my classroom he was somewhat subdued, but he did his math work cheerfully enough, and even made some of his trademark farting sounds with his armpit.
At 12:35 it was time for PE, where the kids were to rehearse for the upcoming dance extravaganza. My class is assigned the Mexican Hat Dance. So Adam, along with the rest of the kids, bounced around for half an hour to the familliar “de-duh de-duh de-duh, de-duddy-de-duh-de-duh” theme. He later reported to his family that he thought his head was going to explode. To me, he said nothing.
Walking back to the classroom my kids were especially noisy- there was a lot of hat dancing down the hall. I decided to call a class meeting, which ended up being a lecture instructing the children to “be [their] best selves at school.” Halfway through my sermon, Adam let out a little whimper. I asked him what was wrong, and he reported that his head still hurt. I told him that as soon as the class meeting was over he should come talk to me, and maybe he could get some more ice. Kids love to get ice.
So I transitioned from lecturing to outlining the next activity. At one point the kids got a bit chatty, and I had to “Shh!” them a few times before finishing my directions and sending them off to their tables to work. As the kids were exitting the circle-area I called to Adam to come see me.
“I can’t,” he said. “I barfed.”
“What?!? You did?!? I didn’t even notice!!!”
“I told you! I said, ‘I barfed.”
“I didn’t hear you!”
“He did say it, Ms McC, and then I said ‘Adam barfed.'”
“What? Really? How did I miss that?!?”
“I heard them say that and I told them not to worry, “Ms McC woud take care of it in a minute.”
“Wow! I am so sorry, Adam! Why don’t you head up to the office so they can call your parents to come and get you.”
“I can’t!”
It was then that I realized that his lap was full of barf. I had noticed a little bit on his shirt during the previous exchange, but the total volume of vomit had eluded me. There was a lot of barf. And it was rapidly stinking up my classroom. I gave him some paper towells and when he had wiped himself down thouroughly I sent him to the office to be picked up. But there was more barf. On the rug. So the custodian had to come down with the industrial vacuum cleaner and chemical barf-neutralizer and clean it all up. But that all smelled bad too, and my kids were going crazy, and the custodian was pissed, so I had the kids sing her our patented Thank You song (Thank you very much much much, thank you very much. You are special, you are sweet, you are someone very neat, thank you very much much much, thank you very much!). Luckily there was only about 20 minutes left of the day, so I had the kids crowd around me in the least-smelly part of the room, where I read “Bunnicula” to them until it was time to go. They walked to the busses exchanging their worst-ever barf stories. It was gross.
It seemed pretty clear that Adam had suffered a concussion, which his MD parents confirmed when I called them an hour later. I thought they might be mad, since you’re supposed to keep concussion victims still and quiet, and he had done the Mexican Hat Dance for half an hour, but they were cool. In fact, his mother told me that Adam had learned a valuable lesson about tripping people (he often trips his little brother). Now he knows first-hand what happens. Barf. Barf happens.
