THE TALE OF THE SHIRT PART #1

The date was some time last October. I woke up late that morning. And in the fear of a tardy, I threw some clean clothes with no care of them matching. I then pestered my sister to get her butt out the door and drive me to school. Like always, I still showed up 10 minutes early. I dragged my feet to my first class where I sat down, and wanted to just put my head down and finish my sleep.

I rolled my eyes when the substitute science teacher announced the whole class would be participating in a lab. I generally didn’t mine labs, until this one. I can’t remember the exact instructions, but it went something like mix these chemicals in the beaker and then shake it and write down what happens. I then remembered her warning us the day before saying we should wear trashy clothes in fear of getting the you-can’t-wash-this-out chemicals on your clothes. I sighed and me and my partner stood and started working on the what seemed to be a pointless lab.

My partner was one who didn’t care about her grades and started to sit down and write text messages to her friends on her cell phone, those friends were also probably not helping there partner. The beakers she gave us seemed somewhat impossible to put on the lid. I tried methods like hitting it across the counter, or punching the side of it with my clenched fist. After finishing the mixing of one of the many chemicals, I wrote down the results and took the lid off the beaker. I would like to think I was half-asleep when I did this. But while opening the lid to our beaker I got my finger stuck between the lid and the beaker, pinching my skin hard I ripped my skin out of it. It stung like crazy, and without thinking I dropped the beaker. In midair I realized it was glass and my hand that wasn’t handicapped flew down to catch it. To my dismay I accidentally caught it with both my hands and poured the chemicals all over my bleeding thumb. When I say bleeding, I mean blood everywhere.

Fortunately the chemicals did not get on my clothes, but what was probably worse was it getting in my cut. I let out a scream when the pain in my thumb went to my brain and even though it was just a little cut, if felt like a stab in the heart. I was then on the ground trying to hold back my tears. The sub, who was not well educated, told me to run to the bathroom. I then tried washing out the chemicals which did not go over well. I then returned to my science room where the still clueless sub told me that I would have to go around to the other classrooms to find Band-Aids. Wow, in the 3 minutes left of the period I ran into several rooms asking for Band-Aids, no teachers having any. I then thought of the one person who would have a Band-Aid. The frog loving science teacher. She of course had several shapes and colors of Band-Aids.

I was informed to go to the office to call my parents for a new shirt. That was the first time I looked at my shirt, the pink Old Navy shirt had blood all over the front, and even some chemicals in it. My mom brought a hideous shirt, but I had no choice but to wear that for the rest of the day. I got home, and pulled the pink shirt out of the dryer and found no evidence of the accident that day. I then threw it in my drawer, not wanting to think of the embarrassment I had gone through. And my thumb was still kind of twitching for the rest of the day.

NEXT BLOG WILL HAVE PART 2 OF THE TALE OF THE SHIRT.