Escape

Battling food poisoning while in a school class

Escape

Drone…..blah…..drivel…..babble…..twadlle….the teacher continued to talk and I continued to not listen. This was the norm. Our dance between teacher and student. More nonsensical words poured out like rancid molasses as I stared a hole into my paper that should have been covered in notes -- but of course, wasn’t. I don’t know how to take notes on malarkey. Each class was the class before. Each class was the class soon to come. Each class after each class after each class…and nothing changed. The high intelligence and low hum of instruction being ignored by the higher-volumed and lower intellectual thoughts of my mind.

It is not the teacher’s fault. It is my own stupidity for signing my name on the dotted line even after I saw that the class started at 8:00am. That’s about two hours before my brain fully wakes up and about four hours before I would choose to be sitting in any classroom listening to whatever rolls off the tongue of any instructor.

Today, was different. I couldn’t place it at first. The angle of the light? The sonar of the pontification? No…this was internal. The difference was inside me. Not like some magical Christmas movie where my heart grows or an angel gets his wings…this was not a pleasant difference. Then I knew. The pizza. From last night. In bed for breakfast. The one sitting out all night. Or was it two nights? Either way…this was a battle. My stomach fortifications were fighting whatever bug invaded the Shores of Stomach inside me. These invading troops were battle tested and resilient while the guardians of my digestion had never proved to be war heroes.

The ships touched land. The pepperoni pizza battalions armed themselves. My defences cowered, hiding behind a splash of stomach acid here and a random white blood cell there. The invaders marched forward inside me as I sat in my desk trying not to squirm. Feeling the calm before the storm. The silence before the bomb lands. The still before the battle. I attempted to turn my mind to words of encouragement to my guts, but none came. I was not William Wallace. I was not Vince Lombari. I was a student in a desk who paid too much for cheap pizza and then left it on my dresser for too long.

Shots fired!

No retaliation.

Another shot!

Another explosion.

Pain engulfed my abdomen and I knew I was in serious trouble. As the troops overran my inner-crevasses the once friendly stomach acid turned on me. Traitor! The waves of the acid crashed against the shores as my defences were being obliterated by the new arrivals. No answer for the stuffed-crust-soldiers. They came in hard and fast with no remorse and not mercy. Shooting, slashing and bludgeoning their way to claiming my stomach as their own.

I tried to actually pay attention to the lesson material being projected towards me from the front of the classroom. Nobody around me knew of the epic battle being fought. Not even the cold sweat that started to leak from my pores gave away the attack of the pizza devils. My mouth started to salivate, a single bead of sweat trickled down my spine underneath my t-shirt. The room started to spin.

Once again I tried to encourage my meager defences to “fight with all your might! We shall fight for the colon, we shall fight for the intestines, we shall fight in the stomach and in the esophagus, we shall fight for the bowls; we shall never surrender!”

They didn’t listen. My stomach surrendered. The waves of acid crashed against the opening leading up to my mouth and I bolted out of my desk. Chair knocked over as I jumped. Legs of the desk squealing as I pushed it aside. Door slammed against the outside wall as I thrust it open trying to escape.

The battle was over. My insides had surrendered to the poor breakfast choice and now the only thing left to do was attempt to get somewhere private before the surrender ejected itself from my mouth in from of the people littering the school hallway.

I failed at that too. The battle lost. The surrender all around me on the floor and dribbling down my chin. I was left with nothing but a longing to go back the drone, blah, drivel, babble, and twadlle I was loathing only a short time earlier.