Thursday, January 10, 2019

The Stomach Ache


Winter break is over, but I didn't work last week, so this week's posts are from before the break.

"My stomach hurts." Russell said this while munching on a bag of Hot Cheetos.

"Those aren't going to help," I said.

Mitchell chimed in, "You don't know that. He could be hungry."

"But when you're hungry, you say you're hungry. Hunger is a specific kind of stomach pain. If you say your stomach hurts..."

They weren't listening. Both argued over me. Russell didn't care. His argument had something to do with him having the snack meant he had to eat the snack. And Mitchell seemed to think that pain = hunger.

Russell asked to return to the health office. He had been there the prior period, but as his grandmother wouldn't come and pick him up, they sent him back to class.

There's a procedure to these things. For general malaise, the health clerk lets the student lie down for twenty minutes. Depending on the severity of the ailment, the clerk may call the student's parent(s) to pick the kiddo up. If the student feels better after the twenty minutes, they go back to class. Or, if someone won't pick the kiddo up. If a parent will pick the kiddo up, they are released for the day.

As Russell headed to the health office, he had switched to eating Funyuns. (He had finished the bag of Hot Cheetos.)

About a half hour later, Russell returned. His father wouldn't come to pick him up.

He admitted the Funyuns might not have been a good idea... as he continued to consume them.

On the bright side, he did not vomit in class. But, alas, he didn't grasp the concept that eating junk wasn't going to help the situation, especially as he was going to have to finish the school day.

(He said his mother lived at least an hour away, so he was out of options as to having someone pick him up. And students can't be released from school on their own. So, unless things got serious enough to call an ambulance, he was going to remain at school until the final dismissal bell.)

15 comments:

  1. Harsh, but I like that rule. If two people wouldn't pick him up, maybe it was because they were already on to his tricks.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fnyons AND hot Cheetos? No wonder he was feeling ill.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They all eat like that all the time. There are state laws about what food can be sold on campus, so a lot of times they bring this stuff in themselves.

      Delete
  3. I love the way your school stories are so grounded in reality. For some people, what challenges them on a daily basis makes me wonder if they are going to be prepared for the challenges of daily living on one's own. I guess there is always hopes and prayers.

    ReplyDelete
  4. If he was still eating, it can't have been that bad.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Boys. They will eat almost anything.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The kid reminds me a scene in the new series "Schooled", a spin-off of "The Goldbergs". It's about 10 years later and one the minor characters in "The Goldbergs" has taken a job as a music teacher to pay bills because she's not a rockstar yet. In high school, she was the kid, and now as a teacher she is facing a kid who was just like her young self. Karma.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I was a huge fan of Funyons when I was a teen (washed down by Mtn. Dew). Can't really imagine eating them now, to be honest.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They're crunchy. My snack food of choice was powered donuts. We all ate horribly as teens, didn't we?

      Delete
  8. I rarely got called by the school to pick up the kids, but I always did when they called. Kids knew not to fake it so if I got called I knew they must not be feeling that great. Now me on the other hand, I might have during a period of time in high school exercised the ability to call my mom and she took the liberty of getting me more days than not when I was perfectly okay to stay at school. Maybe that's why my kids rarely exercised it. I was on to their ways since I had used the same very excuses LOL.

    betty

    ReplyDelete
  9. Oh brother....this kid and many others are on their way to obesity, diabetes and a whole host of ailments.

    ReplyDelete
  10. If someone had genuine stomach pain, that last thing he would do is to eat junk food. And, I am sure the parents also knew his condition wasn't serious enough.

    ReplyDelete

I appreciate your comments.

I respond to comments* via email, unless your profile email is not enabled. Then, I'll reply in the comment thread. Eventually. Probably.

*Exception: I do not respond to "what if?" comments, but I do read them all. Those questions are open to your interpretation, and I don't wish to limit your imagination by what I thought the question was supposed to be.