Church Fainting

Fainting can be a traumatic experience. It can be especially scary when it involves cemeteries, nuns and a priest’s tombstone.

            I was about twelve years old. It was Memorial Day, and as we had every year before, my family went with my grandma to the Catholic Cemetery for mass. I woke up as late as possible, and didn’t have any time to eat breakfast or even get a glass of water. This particular year an aunt and uncle were also around for Memorial Day. When my parents and I arrived at the cemetery there were not enough folding chairs to go around, so I ended up standing. As mass began I noted that it was a particularly hot and humid morning. I was fine until right after communion, when I experienced the strangest sensation. It sounded like a train was rushing by me, and my vision began to blur. I was rather bemused by these events. However, I wasn’t bemused for long. I promptly keeled over.

            When I opened my eyes and blinked a few times to clear my vision, I saw a nun leaning over me. I didn’t know where I was or why a nun happened to be leaning over me. Her head was about a foot from my face, which, to say the least, was a rather disturbing sight to regain consciousness to. When I was helped up I realized that when I fainted my head landed about three inches away from a priest’s headstone.

            Now this fainting spell wasn’t so bad. It was a decent way to get out of church; though it could have been much worse if I had succeeded in cracking my head open. So the moral of the story is, if you ever want to get out of church in a dramatic fashion, stand for your knees locked for long periods of time until you faint.

By Ike Uri

Tank Trouble

One hot summer day, I was at my friend’s house playing in her stock tank. (Pretty hick huh?) We were having a good ol’ time until I decided to run up her slide that was connected to her tree house right beside the stock tank. If you can believe it I wasn’t the smartest cookie in the jar, so I ran up the wet slide. This ended with me tripping up the slide, falling on my chin, and biting all the way through my bottom lip. I saw blood running down my face, and my friend freaked out and went and told her mom. Soon after they took me to the emergency room and called my mom telling her what I had done. Turns out my mom wasn’t surprised, since this would be my second time getting stitches. Everything went fine in the ER, and I was proud of my battle wound like any child would be. To this day I still have my scar. So next time you see me, ask me and I’ll show you.

By Courtney Monzon

Drew Has a Scare

I have a lot of memorable childhood moments. One memory that sticks out in my mind is when Drew Erkenbrack had a scare. Recess was a big deal back in elementary school. For my friends and I, our plan was always to eat lunch as fast as we could so that we would be the first ones to go outside and get a swing. There were only three swings, and everyone wanted one. One day, Drew and I were the first two people to get outside for recess. As we were sprinting to the swings, Drew suddenly stopped and took off back into the school. At the time I didn’t think anything of it, so I proceeded to get a swing. Just as I sat down, I noticed that Colton Odette was running towards me laughing hysterically. I asked him what was so funny, and he told me that Drew ran past him saying, “I think I crapped my pants!”

            About ten minutes into recess, we noticed Drew was just making his way outside. All of my friends were pointing at him and laughing. Once he got to us, we asked him, “What happened?” Drew then said, “I was so excited to get a good swing, that I thought I crapped my pants.” He had not soiled his pants after all, but my friends and I will never let him live it down.

By Blake Woellhof

Jealousy

If you can believe it, back in the fourth grade, Leyli Beims and I weren’t best friends. Well, we were for a while, but for some unknown reason, the two of us had a falling out and drifted to separate friend groups. Now remember, we were ten at the time. So of course, my friend group and I decided we would make Leyli jealous enough to come crawling back crying on her knees. Or something like that. So, being the great planners we were, all of us walked past Leyli and her cool friends: Olivia Leif, MaKayla Nelson, and Jaden Spear. We were at recess and they were playing on the jungle gym. We stopped, and without looking at Leyli, began to laugh like we were having literally the best time of our lives. We nonchalantly looked behind us to see if Leyli had that jealous look of despair on her face. Actually, it was more a face one makes when watching a dying bird. So, we took it up a notch, and what do you do when laughing doesn’t make someone jealous? You sing. You sing your little faces off. So we sang our favorite theme song to our favorite T.V. show - some Japanese cartoon - this time not hiding our blatant manipulation. We checked again and saw Leyli and her posse ignoring us. The rest of the memory is fuzzy;  we may have resorted to name calling or physical violence. I’m not sure, but this story has a happy ending because the next week Leyli and I became best friends again over sugar cookies. And I know that for a fact.

by Cody Schmitz

First Grade Confusion

My father works outside constantly during the summer; he relishes the sun and the heat. As a result, he gets very tan during the summer and my mom always says, “Goodness, Bill, you’re almost turning black!” I understand this figure of speech now, but when I was in first grade, I took it literally.

One day during Mrs. Ball’s class we somehow got on the topic of the Civil War and slavery. As Mrs. Ball tried to explain what slavery was to us in the most delicate way possible, I remembered my mother’s comment and shouted, “My daddy’s black!” Mrs. Ball just looked down me, a very blonde blue eyed little girl, and nodded her head. She murmured, “Mmmhhhmmmmm” and resumed her lesson. Sure enough, Mrs. Ball found out for herself at the next parent-teacher conference that I might have been confused.

by Siri McGuire

Bloody Rocks

Bloody Rocks

            In first grade, Dylan Moore and I were in Kristin Peltier’s class. Dylan and I were troublemakers when we were together, which probably explains why we were not in another class together until high school. Every day the routine began. Come to school, talk to Dylan, flip a card, go to recess, talk to Dylan, and possibly flip another card by the end of the day.

     One particular cold day, he and I were playing at recess when someone got a bloody nose so there was blood on some of the rocks underneath the blue and white jungle gym.  Martina Gieber warned us, “No one to touch the rocks,” before she escorted the nose bleed victim into the building to get help. Of course there was a big huddle of kids around the jungle gym, and before I knew it, Dylan was crawling underneath the playground equipment and grabbing the bloody rocks. Right as he was crawling out, Martina was coming back and she yelled at Dylan. He threw the rock down and acted as if he had done nothing wrong. Martina proceeded to tell him that he could have contaminated his gloves, so Dylan figured he would solve the problem by removing his contaminated gloves. It didn’t dawn on him that in order to remove the last glove he would have to use one of his bare hands. Dylan was then escorted into the building to wash his hands. Perhaps they should show the Blood Borne Pathogens video to first graders? 

By Kadin Zimmerman

Tooth Trauma

                It was a rainy day, and I was in the first grade. Like every other day when the weather was less than amazing we had recess indoors. But instead of watching an episode of Scooby-Doo or playing board games, we went to the gym. I met up with my crew and we decided to play a game of tag. In the midst of running around and screaming our heads off, I ran into Kira Krause. She must have been extremely focused on running away from whoever was “it”, because she shoved me out of her way with impressive strength for a six-year-old girl. I face-planted it right into the hard wood floor. When I came back up, I had a weird sensation in the front of my mouth. I inhaled and felt a sharp pain resonate from my front two teeth. When one of my friends looked at me in horror and starting screaming for the teacher, I got pretty concerned.  I glanced down at the floor and saw a white speck. I picked it up, and realized it was a piece of a tooth. My tooth. My teacher came and I was rushed to the nurse’s office. My mom was called and she showed up to take me to the dentist. Unfortunately, he did a terrible job. For years after the incident my classmates constantly asked me what was up with my teeth. It annoyed me and I usually end up yelling at them. Needless to say, elementary school wasn’t my best time.

by Leyli Beims