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@ERRATICCOMPENDIUM’s response reminded me…
For a while in seventh grade my more normal friends were blended with my very strange goth and emo friends; I sometimes acted as their twisted ringleader.
It was Thanksgiving lunch day in the cafeteria… some of us brought lunch packed by our parents and some of us ate the food served by the school. I had the brilliant idea to mix a piece of each item from everyone’s lunch in one of my sandwich bags. So there was a piece of my Nutella and peanut butter sandwich, a chip and whatever else was in my lunch; bits from other packed lunches; and an item from each Thanksgiving dish—a piece of turkey, a glob of gravy, a dollop of mashed potatoes, a couple of chunks of stuffing, etc.
I smashed it up in the bag into a semi-homogeneous paste and insisted that we all smell it. It went around the table to a couple of us who evidently had nostrils of steel. When it got to one friend (who happened to have the same name as me), just a whiff of the bag’s contents made her puke, and the puke accidentally got into the bag.
I told everyone they had to smell it again.
This set off a chain reaction of vomiting from several other people. Our very tall vice principal was not happy with me but he also didn’t seem to be surprised—I terrorized him often, as i had a huge crush on his very short son and hoped he would someday be my father in law. Sawdust was everywhere. I am very sorry to my school janitorial staff but it was beautiful… despite the gastric upset some of us were experiencing, we were all laughing hysterically. Thereafter, we referred to it fondly, simply as “the bag”
For a while in seventh grade my more normal friends were blended with my very strange goth and emo friends; I sometimes acted as their twisted ringleader.
It was Thanksgiving lunch day in the cafeteria… some of us brought lunch packed by our parents and some of us ate the food served by the school. I had the brilliant idea to mix a piece of each item from everyone’s lunch in one of my sandwich bags. So there was a piece of my Nutella and peanut butter sandwich, a chip and whatever else was in my lunch; bits from other packed lunches; and an item from each Thanksgiving dish—a piece of turkey, a glob of gravy, a dollop of mashed potatoes, a couple of chunks of stuffing, etc.
I smashed it up in the bag into a semi-homogeneous paste and insisted that we all smell it. It went around the table to a couple of us who evidently had nostrils of steel. When it got to one friend (who happened to have the same name as me), just a whiff of the bag’s contents made her puke, and the puke accidentally got into the bag.
I told everyone they had to smell it again.
This set off a chain reaction of vomiting from several other people. Our very tall vice principal was not happy with me but he also didn’t seem to be surprised—I terrorized him often, as i had a huge crush on his very short son and hoped he would someday be my father in law. Sawdust was everywhere. I am very sorry to my school janitorial staff but it was beautiful… despite the gastric upset some of us were experiencing, we were all laughing hysterically. Thereafter, we referred to it fondly, simply as “the bag”
Jul 16, 2025
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@ERRATICCOMPENDIUM it was incredible idk if I can ever top this leadership achievement honestly
Jul 16, 2025
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🍝I’d say this was when I was in third grade, let’s say 1989. My elementary school hosted the gifted ”honors“ class, as it was called. They rotated schools every semester. They were always treated and acted as though they were better than the rest of us.We had just finished our gym period and were headed back to our classroom. To do so we had to pass the school office where our teacher had us stop because she needed to run in for something or other.
Approaching our two gender segregated lines comes the single file line of honors students, being so much more sophisticatedly able to manage being in line next to the opposite gender. The teacher is leading them to wherever they are headed when just short of our two lines of kids the boy at the front of the line suddenly stops. The rest of the line comically train derails as body’s run into each other and heels are trampled. The teacher gets a couple paces ahead before she realizes the line has stopped following. She turns her head back just in time to see the line leaders eyes grow wide and he has this fish lipped look on his face. Then he throws up in front everyone. Not just any garden variety vomit. But a perfect pile of seemingly undigested spaghetti. Like this little motherfucker just swallowed a whole platter of marinara whole and redeposited it right in front of the doorway to the principal’s office.
Out came my teacher to lead us away with a disapproving side eye toward the other instructor.
Approaching our two gender segregated lines comes the single file line of honors students, being so much more sophisticatedly able to manage being in line next to the opposite gender. The teacher is leading them to wherever they are headed when just short of our two lines of kids the boy at the front of the line suddenly stops. The rest of the line comically train derails as body’s run into each other and heels are trampled. The teacher gets a couple paces ahead before she realizes the line has stopped following. She turns her head back just in time to see the line leaders eyes grow wide and he has this fish lipped look on his face. Then he throws up in front everyone. Not just any garden variety vomit. But a perfect pile of seemingly undigested spaghetti. Like this little motherfucker just swallowed a whole platter of marinara whole and redeposited it right in front of the doorway to the principal’s office.
Out came my teacher to lead us away with a disapproving side eye toward the other instructor.
Jul 16, 2025
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⭐i was 9 years old when my next door neighbor showed me the delightful scent of a laundry detergent tab. she liked sniffing it and i couldn't agree more with her take. we didn't have that sort of thing in my house- mother was liquid. but we did have solid washing machine detergent, so i supplemented my new interest with that and toted around the solid detergent in my school bag- smelling it when i needed a bit of comfort, kind of like a blanky, which yes obviously i had one of those too. unfortuately, the little cube started to crack in my bag, covering everything, including my snacks, in weird soapy crumbs. i started to feel insecure about the whole thing, like is this kind of weird that i'm carrying solid detergent now to school? So, i put it in the trash. i walked there quietly, wrapped it up in a piece of paper and threw it away and went back to my seat. for some god forsaken reason, my teacher that day decided we should do a lesson on trash. so she emptied out the can on a table and went through everything that had been thrown away that day; apple cores, pencil sharpenings, and unfortunately, my mother's solid dish washing machine detergent. i wish i was kidding.
i agonized watching the table, the detergent like a lightning bolt, the only thing i'm looking at, seizing every ounce of my attention. hoping to god she just misses it. she doesn't. in fact she picks it up, sniffs it. starts saying "WHAT IS THIS" and saying "WHO THREW THIS AWAY" and the whole time im silent. sitting there in fear. i'm sweating. no one says anything. everyone is looking at each other and i continue to omit, an important distinction- not a lie. it's stressful, it feels like it lasts an eternity. she's looking at us all in the eyes wondering who is gonna crack. she will not let it go. continually, at least in my memory, WAILING. and if there was one thing i was sure of, it was that if i did confess, my new name would be soapy or something idk lol so i sat there. let my back cover in sweat. poker face. poker face mary they could have called me. she finally relented. we moved on. i was free. but i will never forget my first mass omission (again not a lie.......... ) weirdly the teacher later died of slurping on a tide pod on one of those challenges in 2018
ok that bit isnt true
i agonized watching the table, the detergent like a lightning bolt, the only thing i'm looking at, seizing every ounce of my attention. hoping to god she just misses it. she doesn't. in fact she picks it up, sniffs it. starts saying "WHAT IS THIS" and saying "WHO THREW THIS AWAY" and the whole time im silent. sitting there in fear. i'm sweating. no one says anything. everyone is looking at each other and i continue to omit, an important distinction- not a lie. it's stressful, it feels like it lasts an eternity. she's looking at us all in the eyes wondering who is gonna crack. she will not let it go. continually, at least in my memory, WAILING. and if there was one thing i was sure of, it was that if i did confess, my new name would be soapy or something idk lol so i sat there. let my back cover in sweat. poker face. poker face mary they could have called me. she finally relented. we moved on. i was free. but i will never forget my first mass omission (again not a lie.......... ) weirdly the teacher later died of slurping on a tide pod on one of those challenges in 2018
ok that bit isnt true
May 28, 2025
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📖We were taking our band buses back to Florida from Washington D.C. so everyone was already exhausted and very ready to be home. The girls bus broke down in middle-of-nowhere North Carolina at 2 A.M. in front of a random church. The vibes in there felt like Lord of the Flies because our air conditioner had stopped working and half the girls just wanted to go back to sleep while the other half were freaking out. One girl kept trying to convince everyone that she could fix the bus herself. Had we been in there longer, we may have started eating each other. The boys bus dropped all their passengers at a nearby Denny's and came back to shuttle the rest of us over. This was the morning after the night of St. Patrick's Day, so half the Denny's was full of drunk adults and the other half was a bunch of dejected marching band kids. The waitresses were all wearing shamrock hats, and they danced to Celebration to try to cheer us up. We were sleeping across the booths and pushing chairs together to create makeshift beds, and it looked ridiculous. All of the Snapchat memories I have from this ordeal are absolutely delirious. Our band director could not get ahold of the bus company to send us another bus, and she started crying and had a breakdown. We all wrote her a nice thank-you note on a napkin and signed it for her. That morning/afternoon, we finally got another bus sent to us, which then took us to a Golden Corral buffet for lunch. I promptly got food poisoning from this Golden Corral and I was fighting for my life in that bathroom. Overall an insane experience. My friend had been trying to take polaroid pictures the entire D.C. trip and none of them turned out EXCEPT for the one she took of the Denny's sign. I later turned this whole situation into a comedic script for my playwriting class.
Also on this trip: some 13 year-old boys called us hoes at the Lincoln Memorial. :)
Also on this trip: some 13 year-old boys called us hoes at the Lincoln Memorial. :)
Jul 12, 2024
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