Mr. Kipper |
English 8-2
30 August, 1998

“Slowly I walk through the gently falling rain,
and I know that I will never pass this way again,
never wondering why,
teardrops chafing my eyes.”

So went the first verse of the song I listened to over and over again every day because it expressed my outlook on life perfectly. It served as my inspiration as I wrote pages of depressing poems in my diary.

I couldn’t stand it; I couldn’t take it. My teachers demanded way too much, I worked my guts out on hours of homework every night, and to top it all off I had an hour and a half of swim practice every day. There is little in this world I despise more heartily than swim practice.

Every night I prayed that God would somehow make it easier. What I really wanted was to not have to go to school (or swimming, or ideally, both) at all anymore. I asked God to make that happen, hoping with all my heart but doubting anything would ever come of it.

You are about to hear a tale that begins with monstrous horrors but ends in a glorious attainment of Super Happiness. Listen carefully, because I’m not going to repeat myself and you’ll want to be ready for the quiz.

* * *

It was March 1998, the Tuesday that I should have been down at Night Gallery for the art display. But I didn’t make it; my stomach hurt too badly.

A week or so later, I had a choir rehearsal after school, and I barely made it through with my sanity, the pain was so bad. The following Thursday was the NJHS induction-- I was at school that day, but that night I felt too incredibly awful to attend.

This sort of thing had been happening to me all too often, and I wasn’t liking it very much at all. Finally Mum made an appointment for me with our physician, Dr. Shimotsu, who thought it was an ulcer and suggested that we see a gastrointerologist. However, we had bad memories and didn’t wanna see a gastrointerologist.

The next day I felt too shockingly horrid to go to school.

Such, we found ourselves at the gastrointerologist’s anyway; I went to my appointment with Dr. Tucker, and he wanted to take some X-rays. I had them, but nobody would know the results until the next day. When we found out what they displayed, Dr. Tucker decided it was Irritable Bowel Syndrome (don’t ask what it does because you don’t want to know) and told me to have a special pill and a bottle of magnesium citrate, which tastes like Sprite only with all the sweetness taken out and an additional bottle of lemon juice, the following Saturday. Being the good little citizen that I am, I did and I hated it.

I didn’t want to miss any more school. You see, with the amount of work I knew all of my teachers enjoyed assigning, I was certain I’d find myself with enough make-up work to keep me busy for a length of time comparable to the Paleozoic Era. This being so, I tried my gosh-darn hardest to go to school all that week, but I just couldn’t stand it. We headed back to Dr. Tucker’s office, where we were informed that the magnesium citrate hadn’t been strong enough. His prescription? Two chuffin’ gallons of a dreadful substance called NuLYTLY.

Before we go any further, let me tell you a little something about NuLYTLY. The flavour is somewhat reminiscent of putrescent salt water, and the texture is thick and oily. Each time you take a swallow, it’s a battle to keep it down.

Two gallons of this stuff in one day.

It turned out to be just as bad as I thought it would be, and quite a bit worse. I felt too awful to protest, and I knew it wouldn’t do me any good if I did. By this time two weeks of missed school had accumulated, and I didn’t look like feeling better any time soon. We got homebound papers, and, pow, I was out of school for the rest of seventh grade.

Up in heaven, I could hear God saying, “Well, you asked for it!” And what could I say? I had.

A week after this, I had another bottle of magnesium citrate and another gallon of NuLYTLY. It wasn’t any more pleasant this time-- but, miraculously, I felt as good as new. Now my only task was to finish out the year on homebound and take thirteen Milk of Magnesia pills every night as maintenance.

* * *

My homebound teacher was named Mrs. Mr. Kipper. She came on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to give me assignments; I suppose she was nice enough, but she smelled kinda funny and had an odd way of teaching Algebra.

But you see, my children, at this point I didn’t mind much of anything; I was too blissfully happy to have no more stomachaches, and every morning I could watch Teletubbies. Even apart from that, the Monkees box set that AnJa and I had pooled our money on had just come in, so I had fifty-two Monkees episodes to fill my mind with during those days. The Super Happiness in my life steadily expanded. Naturally, I also spent about six hours a day rotting my brain on the computer, and that was also Super Happy.

Today will find me back in school, and those Super Happy days of sleeping in every morning as late as I liked and gorging my brain on Teletubbies and Monkees are only a fond memory. Moreover, I know that God does indeed have a sense of humour.