Wait ‘till you hear about hickeys…
On the last day of summer before the start of second grade, I sat at the pool with some friends playing with a bee sting remover. The device is like a plastic syringe and uses suction to pull the sting out of the flesh. Who knew that suctioning the thing to your chin could be so outrageously fun? Prancing around in my little Speedo, I exclaimed, “look, I’m a Pharaoh!” as it dangled from my chin, or “now I’m a unicorn!” when stuck to my forehead. What I should have anticipated is that I’d be showing up on the first day of school with perfectly round purple dots about one inch in diameter all over my face.
-Keenan Timko (MSB ‘10)
La cucaracha
On my first day of college, I moved into the sixth floor of Darnall with excitement and nervousness. After unpacking boxes of things that were vitally important or completely useless (shot glasses and ironing supplies, respectively), a group of neighbors congregated in my room. Approximately ten of us freshman girls were sitting around our room, chatting about the usual NSO subjects (school, major, how much we couldn’t wait to get drunk). Suddenly, one girl shrieked. As we looked in the general direction of where she was hyperventilating and pointing, we saw the cockroach scuttle from under one bed to the other. Glass-shattering screaming filled the room, and we fled the scene. Later that night, after spraying some kind of cleaning supply I was sure would kill the critters under my bed and finally falling asleep, I awoke to the strong smell of something burning at 2 a.m. One of my inebriated floormates had decided to make popcorn by putting an unwrapped bag directly in a plastic bowl in the microwave. Darnall didn’t burn down that night, but I comforted myself with the thought that if it did, at least the roaches would live to tell our tales.
-Sara Carothers (COL ‘10)
The The
Mrs. Freiden warned us to pay attention, because we would need this word a lot. She was obsessed with us learning the word “the” on the first day of school, but my kindergarten mind couldn’t really care less. What did she know about which words I’d need and which ones I wouldn’t? Besides, I needed to pee like a pregnant race horse and was starting to resent the downward shift in freedom from half-day pre-k to full-day kindergarten. At home in the afternoon, I could do what I want, when I wanted. (That babysitter knew nothing). After a few more minutes of droning, the desire for gastrointestinal release and brazen rebellion overwhelmed me and I ran for it (without even asking for the bathroom pass). Barely had I threw open the stall door when it happened: I peed straight through my new, purple Oshkosh B’gosh overalls. And I didn’t even have a change of clothes in my cubby.
-Chelsea Paige (SFS ‘09)
Fear and loathing in fifth grade
My dad’s favorite picture of me was taken on my first day of school in Israel, when I was in fifth grade. We moved there for half a year while my dad did a sabbatical at the Weizman Institute, and my brother and I were going to go to Israeli public school. As you can imagine, my ten-year-old self was feeling some trepidation at the prospect of a whole new social set, in a language I was only passably fluent in. My dad is ever the eager cameraman (for his birthday last year, we got him a tripod, and the year before that a set of glasses that said “Now say cheese!”), and had the camera ready at seven in the morning to document this important event.
On one side my younger brother and mother are smiling, he too small and innocent to comprehend how horrible this day was going to be. On the other side, offset by a drab gray fleece sweatshirt (thanks, mom), is me. My expression in this photo could be described as “truculent.” Or perhaps “murderous.” I look like I’m clenching my teeth so hard that my jaw still hurts, and my eyes are glaring as hard as they can. I’ve never tried to kill anyone, but I bet this picture could do it, if aimed correctly. I look like dissatisfaction incarnate. My dad thinks it’s hysterical.
-Shira Hecht (COL ‘10)
