Nose for Trouble

My favorite year of grade school was without a doubt third grade. It wasn't the kids in the class or the fact that my grades were a little better, it was my teacher. Plain and simple, I loved my teacher.
In my view Mrs. Peters was to a third grade boy what Michael Jordan was to basketball. I tried every way an Eight year old could to gain favor from her. The only problem, most other kids in the class had the same idea. I was going to have to impress her in a big way to win her over. In the spring of the year I did just that. I just wish she had been in school that day to see it. In fact, had she been in school that day, my impressive display of mayhem would never have happened.
I don't remember the reason Mrs. Peters was gone that day. We had a substitute teacher by the name of Miss Priss, I think.
Our classroom was under the bleachers on the north side of the old middle school gym. We entered the building by prying open one of two windowless fire containment doors. They were built to contain fires as well as children. It makes perfect sense, now.
After entering the building, there is a small step down to the hallway where one would take a quick right-turn past two very thick, plate-glass doors. Those doors were always propped open by those little door-stopper wedgie things. Once past the doors, you simply follow the hallway down to the classroom where Mrs. Peters smiling face would be there to greet you.
On this fateful day I actually raced several other kids to be the first one in the room from recess. I have no idea why.
For the entire school year, the glass doors were open. Apparently, Miss Priss thought the glass doors should be closed that day during recess, so as not to get a chill on her already sub-temperature body.
It was a bright and sunny day. The kind of day that when you go into a building after being outside, the single 12.5 watt light bulb in the hall just doesn't seem to help a whole lot.


In near darkness I hit the step, turned right down the hall and CRASH!!! I thought the sound was the building collapsing in front of me. I had run directly into the one of the plate glass doors and shattered it into 16.9 trillion pieces.
I was far enough ahead of the next kid that I was sure that I could run and hide and no one would know who did it. As I turned to begin my strategic retreat, I saw something hitting the floor several feet in front of me. An arc of blood matching the turn of my head. "Hmmm... that's strange" I thought, "I wonder who's blood that is?"
Without feeling it, a shard of 3/8 inch thick glass had nipped the bridge of my nose and nearly cut it off my face.
A girl that had just entered the door behind me, let out what I would best describe as a "yelsp" (half yelp, half gasp). The look on her face was the same look she had eight years later at goat-man bridge. But that story is for a future column.
Instinctively knowing I may need help, I bolted down the hall towards the classroom. Miss Priss came out of the room to see what the commotion was, she spotted me and also let out a yelsp of her own. I got about halfway down the hall and just folded like a narcoleptic dog having an episode while on the run.
I remember someone holding a wad of those brown paper towels you get in school bathrooms on my nose. I was at the ER shortly after.

Well, my nose took 90 sutures to repair and I did get the rest of the school day off. When Mrs. Peters returned to class, she indicated that she really didn't think it was such a good idea for me to be getting into trouble like that without her being there to oversee it.