8th Grade

Are you still in 8th grade? We’re about to find out. If you laugh at the following (true) story, you’re still there. If you don’t, I guess you’re a grownup.

Gym class. 8th grade. About 10 or 12 of us boys were standing around the gym near the bleachers. I don’t remember any girls being there. They were probably at the other end of the gym clustered in terror about how they looked in their gym clothes. We should have felt the same way, standing there in our desperately wrinkled little maroon gym shorts and shirts, straight from their pungent little mold lockers. But we were instead playing a game while we waited for gym class to start.

It was a version of ‘Chicken’. One kid would lay down on his back on the gym floor to the side of the bleacher set with his head near the bleachers. Another would walk up a few steps onto the bleachers and jump down, with his gym sneakers slapping down on the gym floor a couple of inches to either side of the kid’s head while usually yelling HYAAA!!! for dramatic effect. The guy on the floor would try not to flinch or, worse, chicken out and move at the last second―which could spell disaster! So, the game could progress with the jumper getting even closer to the kid’s head and/or the jumper could jump from an even higher bleacher step. I think there were 6 tiers to this set of bleacher seats, and maybe at the top it was 5 feet high.

My turn to jump. My friend, let’s call him Andy, was in position below me and I climbed I think to the 5th tier and jumped. Everyone was watching.

As my feet slammed to either side of his head, I, for some reason, forgot to lock my knees and my butt slammed down into his face, wedging his nose firmly between the peach halves of my little 8th grade bum. And, the impact was so great on my intestinal system that it produced an immediate loud and clear blast―the shot heard ’round the gym.

Everyone watching instantly collapsed to the gym floor and began laughing into respiratory distress. I was also laughing, just as hard as the rest, and so much so that I was too weak to stand up and had to roll to the side to get off of poor Andy.

We’re screaming. Andy is still on his back, and now his hands are on his nose, and he’s repeating “OH, my nose, my nose!”

For weeks afterwards we’d all see each other in the hallways and greet each other with “OH, my nose! My nose!”

Anyway.

Did you laugh?