Embarrassing Moment

     It was sixth grade, my first year in middle school and the beginning paths of adolescence were approaching.   The date was September 6, at 8:15 in the morning when I spotted a classmate of mine named Joshua.  Joshua was a lot taller than I was and I guess you could call him “cute.”    I didn’t see my usual friends this morning.  I didn’t have anyone to talk to and Joshua didn’t have anyone to talk to, so I decided to bite the bullet and say a friendly hello.  I then leisurely without any haste of course, walked over to him and said, “Hello Joshua.”  He gave me a blank stare and had the look of “What do you want?”  I of course, was not much of a chatterbox like the other girls in my class were, therefore we had a two second conversation and he walked away.  Things got very interesting after this first encounter though.

    
     When I had my next class, I thought Joshua was giving me the look of “love.”  I wasn’t interested in mushy, gushy stuff, not now of course, not this early in life.  So, I just politely smiled back.  After I smiled back, he slid a picture of himself with a note on the back across my desk.  It was an awkward exchange.  The teacher was discussing the middle ages and the next thing I know, a love picture comes my way.  I thought to myself “thank you for your interest, but I really need to pay attention to this boring history lesson.”  He seemed to understand my quiet response.  Anyway, I knew we had plenty of other opportunities to talk.    

     The next day at PE class, the coach decided to play soccer.  When the coach announced the teams, he put Joshua and me on the opposite teams.  This was great, just great.  I of course was not very athletic at the time, although, I gradually got better as the year progressed. During the game, I was playing defense and Joshua was a mid-fielder trying to make a goal.   I naturally blocked his goal without even thinking.  I guess he was happy to see me but not too happy because he missed the goal.  Then after forty-five minutes of PE class, we had lunch. 

     Lunch was a turning point in my relationship with Joshua.  I sat next to him at the cafeteria lunch table.  He didn’t say much but he gave me a big smile.  I was innocently eating my turkey sandwich and grapes when I noticed Joshua was having problems opening his Go-Gurt.  Go-Gurt is yogurt that is in a plastic push up tube.   Since Joshua was struggling with opening the tube, I offered to open it for him. Boy was that a mistake!  When opening it, I didn’t realize that the yogurt was pushed all the way to the top ready to burst out. 

     I gave the Go-Gurt a hard push and it wildly squirted all over Joshua’s head, face, and the cafeteria ceiling.  Everyone just stared at me and the girl sitting next to me said in a nasty tone, “Really Lydia?”  Joshua just sat there with pink strawberry yogurt dripping down his forehead and chin.  First the lunch table in my grade started laughing then the entire cafeteria started laughing.  I could feel my face turning bright red and my voice was totally frozen.  Joshua took it pretty well though.  He said, “It’s okay Lydia, it’s just Go-Gurt, a little sugar and milk won’t hurt me, just think of it as hair gel.  And I needed a bath anyways.”  He was a real trooper about the situation.  Once I was able to think again, I got up and went to the kitchen and grabbed lots of paper towels.  I offered to help clean him up but Joshua declined this offer and said he could do it himself.  For the rest of the lunch period, I was dead silent.  I felt like this was the most embarrassing moment of my life. 

     Joshua left my school in seventh grade and I kind of missed him.  A few of my friends remembered this lunch period and would tease me about it from time to time.  Now that I am older, I know that embarrassing moments are only temporary and they will eventually pass.   When faced with an embarrassing situation, I sometimes get through it by thinking of Joshua and the Go-Gurt moment.

Fear Strikes the Beltway

     It was October 24, 2002 and the latest news about the beltway sniper spread through my school like wildfire.  Finally, my second grade teacher asked everyone to stop what they were doing and go their seats.  She then announced that the beltway sniper had been caught by the police and things at school could go back to normal now.   When I got home from school there was nothing but stories about the snipers on the television.  It seems that there were two men and they used a blue, 1990 Chevy Caprice as their rolling nest for randomly killing people in Maryland and Virginia.   For 23 days, these two men had terrorized the Washington DC suburbs.  They had killed ten innocent, everyday people and critically injured three others. 

     At first, I was not sure if they really caught the right criminals.  However, as I listened to the news, I learned that the police had found them sleeping in their car.  The car had a hole cut in the trunk near the license plates so that shots could be fired from the car without anyone noticing. There was other evidence in the car that convinced the police they were the right ones.  Police records showed they had performed robberies and murder in Alabama and Louisiana before heading to the DC area.  Once the police found them, they were immediately arrested and put in jail.  As it turned out both of the suspects were convicted at a trial and were sentenced to life without parole.  One man was a minor, so he was not given the death penalty.  The older of the two was given the death penalty in Virginia and he was eventually executed by lethal injection.

     I remember the beltway sniper because it was the first time I was really scared and worried about someone in my family getting killed.  The year before this happened there was the terrorist attack at the Pentagon.  I recall seeing all the parents in front of the school trying to pick their kids up early.  My mom was there early.  She took me home and said my dad would be late.  We watched the news all night and saw the Pentagon on fire.  The events of 9/11 were talked about at school but everyone was calm and I was not scared at all.

     The beltway sniper was different.  When it first started, there was a special assembly at school and the principal explained that we were going to take safety precautions until the police could find out what was going on.   All after school activities were cancelled.  There was no more recess outside and the play ground was shut down.  The school doors and windows were locked tight.  Visitors were restricted to parents only, which meant no special speakers or parties.  The cafeteria blinds were closed.  We were told not to sit or play near the windows.  The lines for loading buses were inside of the school instead of outside.  We also had a few emergency drills. 

     The changes at school affected the students and the teachers.   Each time another person was killed, I could hear the teachers whispering about the sniper and shaking their heads.  Although this bothered me, I didn’t really get scared until the snipers shot a woman at the Home Depot.  My dad and I would usually go to the Home Depot once a week to pick up supplies for projects.   We had been at the same Home Depot the day before the shooting.  It was a totally random shooting and nobody saw anything.  It could have been us.  Dad was very sad and said we were not going anywhere unless we really needed something.  We went to the grocery store for food but that was about it.  He said that we were very lucky.

     When the snipers were finally caught, everything at school returned to normal.  At home things went back to normal too.  However, for a while my dad and I shopped at Lowe’s instead of the Home Depot.  What I learned from this experience is that daily life can change very quickly, with no warning at all.  As I have gotten older, I would add that this experience taught me how to react during a major crisis situation.