Is It Friday Yet!
I’m not sure what I was expecting to find behind the door, but what I saw when Stacks opened it, was not something I would have ever expected to see in a school. How do I describe it? Oh I know: Pepto-Bismol! The entire room looked, as though it had been hosed down with Pepto-Bismol. Pink walls, pink ceiling, pink shaggy area rug, pink metal desk with a pink vinyl high-back office chair and on the pink desk was a lamp with a pink lampshade.
There wasn’t anyone in the… uh… office, but that didn’t seem to alarm Stacks who sashayed right in like she owned the place. When I didn’t follow, she reached out, took hold of the front of my shirt and pulled me into the room.
Stacks left me standing near the door, while she went behind the desk to a low, wide filing cabinet. She was rummaging through the cabinet and stopped every few seconds to look back at me, as if she expected me to abruptly disappear from the room.
“She always keeps extra clothes in here for just such an emergency.” Stacks said.
“She who?” I asked.
“Oh, the school nurse.” She said off handedly, “This is her office.”
“Why’s it pink?” I asked, not really meaning for the words to come out of my mouth.
Stacks turned back around with some clothes in her arms. “Because she likes pink, silly.” She said with a humorous snort.
She held a white shirt with bright blue buttons up to me.
“That should fit, though it might be a bit big on you.” She said and had she left it at that, it would have been just fine, but she had to go and add, “Are all the boys in California scrawny like you?”
I sucked in my bottom lip and chomped down on it with my teeth to keep me from saying something smart back to her. That was twice in two days that someone had called me scrawny and it was already getting old.
She didn’t seem to notice as she held a pair of green, yes I said green, pants up to me. “Oh no, way too big.”
I think I may have sighed a breath of relief when she said those horrid green pants were too big for me.
After holding up a pair of blue jeans and a pair of dark blue slacks, she unobtrusively announced, “I suppose you can roll up the jeans.”
After setting the shirt and jeans down on the desk, she said, “I’m afraid there aren’t any underpants in the cabinet so you’ll have to go Commando.”
“Excuse me?” I said with a nervous cough.
“Commando… you know,” she blushed slightly as she flicked her hair back.
I shrugged.
“Commando means, you wear your pants without underpants.” She said and now she was really blushing.
Why I said what I said next, I don’t know, but oh how I wish I hadn’t. “I’m not wearing any anyhow.”
Oh my gosh!!! I thought my face was going to burst into flames, it got that hot. Even my ears felt like they were on fire.
Thankfully, Stacks left me alone to change and I had time to recover from my embarrassment, but she returned quicker than I expected. With a gentle knock, she announced her return and without me saying a word, she came back into the room. I had on the pants and was buttoning up the shirt.
“Oh most definitely, we’ll need to roll up those pants.” She said and knelt before me, to begin rolling up the hem of the pants.
I felt really uncomfortable, having this strange girl helping me dress, but I didn’t feel like it would be right to object, seeing how she had just saved me from a fatal case of embarrassment, had any other student seen me with my clothes wet.
She looked up at me, “What’s with the socks? Or do they wear different socks in California?”