The Container Club

February 6, 2012 at 11:54 PM | Posted in Another Day Another Dollar | Leave a comment

I belong to a number of highly exclusive food clubs, of course.  There’s the Prezel Eaters Club, the Clean Plate Club,  Kettle Corn Anonymous, and the latest one that I’ve decided to call The Container Club.

The Container Club is comprised of nurses, mothers, and me.  We, the fine members of this protective organization, have learned when a human is going to hurl, puke, vomit, etc.  We can sense the signs.  We feel it in our pinky toes.  We hear it in the wind.  We see it in the pale cheeks.  And we are dedicated to finding a receptacle to contain IT from the rest of you even if that means catching IT in our own sacrificial outstretched palms.  We are your first and only line of defense.  We deserve customized t-shirts.  Also, I would like a manicure.

My most recent Container Club moment happened at work.  It is the most wonderful time of the year in public schools!  It is standardized testing season!  Whee for bubble-filling and #2 pencils!  A shout out to “Please fill in the circle completely, and make your mark heavy and dark.”

Confession: as a kid, I LOVED standardized testing.  I thought the reading selections were interesting.  I was also the child  hovering outside the library attempting to use the power of MY MIND to get it to open early and the one who rejoiced when my second grade teacher sent me home with the third grade lesson book to borrow ALL SUMMER.  I am who I am.

So, being a compliant little teacher in good standing, I implored the iChildren in my classroom to take the testing so very seriously because otherwise bats will eat the sun and a puppy’s head may fall off somewhere, blah, blah, blah.  NOTE TO SCHOOL DISTRICT: I DID NOT REALLY TALK ABOUT BATS AND PUPPY HEADS FALLING OFF.  I READ THE DIRECTIONS WORD FOR WORD.  I AM A GOOD GIRL.  And the iChildren all nodded and blinked their little eyes earnestly because they aren’t really allowed to do anything else during testing.

And it was all going beautifully.  Bubbles were being filled in completely with marks that were heavy and dark.  I was monitoring the room and fully prepared to recite the testing creed, “I’m sorry, but I cannot help you.  Please do your best.”  It was then that I sensed IT.  I detected IT’s approach.  I saw, in the pallor of one of my scholars, that IT wished to be known.

See, I know vomit and IT knows me.  IT is my life partner.  I complete IT.  For some reason, kids who are sick always choose to hurl in my teachery presence.  Someone displays dinner every year, including leap years, in my class.  Field trips are not complete without a trail of upcycled Skittles festooning the side of our bus.  Taste the rainbow, indeed.  My sister puked on me during our own middle school years (fish n’ chips and black cherry ice cream in a waffle cone).  My nieces think The Black Thing and I are excellent used food storage places, particularly if I am wearing something nice or if I have just had the car detailed.  Artemis the Cat saves her best hairballs for my shoes.  I’m getting used to it.  IT.

So, I grabbed the trash can.  I gracefully placed it with utmost compassion in front of the heaving and pasty child.  I teamed with gravity and the plastic trash bag (which does not dull temperature or texture, by the way) to adjust the, umm, flow of things when some…things…hung on the edge of the trash can.  And I maintained an appropriately concerned expression as he shared his breakfast with the trash can and Part 2 of the reading test.  And with all the other kids in the room who actually, to their absolute credit, took it like champs and kept filling in bubbles, making their marks heavy and dark.  Excellent and lovely children, they were and are.

The sufferer went to the nurse.  I sprayed a little Lysol, swapped out some #2 pencils that were getting dull and appropriately notified people about the possible test disruption because I am a good little soldier.  Also because it was fun to write “VOMIT EVENT” in the subject line of a work email.

I mean seriously, “VOMIT EVENT?”  Who gets to write that?  I thought about writing “VARSITY VOMIT” to be sporty but decided that plain and classy was the way to go in the serious testing environment.

Above all, let us be classy.

And let us not eat Froot Loops before taking standardized tests.  Just saying.