Sometimes You Smell Bad

I lived in a small city in northern Wisconsin when I was growing up. It was on Lake Superior, which provides wonderful views for adults and a lot of fun for kids.

In my neighborhood, there were a lot of kids. I walked to school everyday with Jody and Terry. We were all the same age. We all wore our little dresses (girls wore dresses every day back then) and our school shoes. School shoes were for school and church only. Kids had tennies for playing, PF Flyers, canvas with rubber soles that made us believe we could run faster and jump higher than anyone else.

Everyday on the way to school we would take a different route. We were only 4 blocks away from the school, so there weren’t a lot of different ways to go. Normally our first stop was the Co-op with the grain elevator. We stopped in there for penny candy and then walked up Eleventh Avenue and down Sixth Street to Beaser Elementary.

One day early in the fall when I was in second grade we decided that after the Co-op, we would take a long way around to school through the swamp. To this day don’t know why we wanted to go through the swamp, but we did. Everything is an adventure when you are seven years old.

Obviously, we didn’t want to go in the swamp, we just wanted to walk on the fallen trees to cross the swamp. It was a challenge and we were sure that we could all do it

All three of us got on this big tree trunk that was at the edge of the swamp and started across. Well we weren’t very far and all three of us fell in. We were waist deep in swamp water. Green algae stuck to our legs and our shoes were covered with muck.

We knew if we went back home, we would all be in trouble. We would make our parents mad, we would be late for school and it would not be a fun day. So, rather than risk our parent’s anger, we squeezed most of the water out of our skirts and socks and we scraped the mud off our shoes and we went to school.

As we walked down the hall to Mrs. Bjorklund’s classroom, our shoes made a squishing sound and our skirts were still dripping. We left footprints. All of the other kids just looked at us and we just looked straight ahead like nothing was wrong. We even had a little algae still stuck on our legs.

We hung up our jackets, put our lunches on the shelf and went into our classroom and sat in our desks. Luckily none of us sat in the front row.

Mrs. Bjorklund was a wonderful teacher. I loved her. She was a little rough around the edges but she made school fun and she always had pretty dresses on and lots of shiny jewelry. Now that I’m grown up, She reminds me of Elaine Stritch, she even kind of looked like her.

So the day started, first the Pledge of Allegiance and then My Country Tis of Thee. I kept thinking that if we could just get through the first couple of hours, our clothes would dry and no one would know the difference. Our Moms would think we got dirty on the way home from school and no one would be the wiser. Seriously, we got dirty all the time, one time Clare and I played in a big puddle of tar. Swamp water and algae was nothing for my Mom to clean up.

Our first lesson of the day was reading. Mrs. Bjorklund started walking up and down the rows of desks. I sat in the second row, Terry sat in the third row, we were right across the aisle from each other.

She was calling on different kids to read out loud and when she called on you, you had to stand up. She called on me. I stood up like nothing was wrong and read the next paragraph. I never once looked up from my book. She was standing at the end of the aisle looking at me.

My skirt was dripping, there was a puddle around my desk and that’s when I noticed the smell. If it weren’t for that smell we probably would have gotten away with it.

When I finished I sat down and Mrs. Bjorklund called on someone else.
But she kept looking at me and the puddle. She walked to the back of the room and then walked down the aisle between my desk and Terry’s desk.

She looked down and looked from side to side between me and Terry. We were both wet from the waist down, we had algae on our legs and it was clear where that smell was coming from.

I sat there in my little desk, frozen. I sat still and pretended to concentrate on the book we were reading. I tried so hard to concentrate, but I couldn’t. Mrs. Bjorklund was standing right between our desks, looking back and forth between us and at the ever growing puddle. I couldn’t stand it anymore, I had to look up and face my teacher.

Mrs. Bjorklund was looking down at Terry and I and she was smiling!

She wasn’t going to yell at us, she wasn’t going to call our parents, she wasn’t going to send us see the principal. She smiled, shook her head and walked back to the front of the room.

Looking back I guess she figured the swamp water,algae and muck were enough punishment for us that day. And I learned something very important, if you are going to try and fool someone, you need to make sure you don’t smell really bad.

I’m tempted from time to time to do things I really shouldn’t. Having AA sometimes feels like I’m trying to cross that swamp on that log. I have a daily battle brewing whether I should attempt laundry, shopping, or stairs. Even though I know that anyone of these things might trigger a lot of pain for me, I still try and get away with doing something. And I always get caught.

If the laundry is suddenly caught up, or I go to the store and buy soda or something else that is heavy, I have a heck of a time explaining how it got home. I know that Jerry is just looking out for me, but deep down inside I’m still that little kid trying to get away with something.

Just like when I was seven, I would have gotten away with it too, except for that smell.

My name is Anne McGill. I write for a great website, Chronic Pain Lifestyles. My articles are all in “Anne’s Corner”. I began writing as a way of telling my family and friends that I’m ok even though I have adhesive arachnoiditis. This disease causes chronic pain and there is no cure or treatment for it. I had back surgery 4 years ago and shortly after I recovered, I got AA.

I can no longer work because of the pain. It causes great pain to sit or stand for longer than just a few minutes. My writing is my therapy. It helps to know that through writing, I can communicate with all kinds of people and hopefully help someone every now and then.