Daily Diatribes

It upsets me when I can’t force out a blog entry. I started one numerous times last week and then just found myself staring at the screen. There are lots of topics in my life that cry out for blogs (SOCKS!!! DOG POOP!!!! CLOGGED TOILETS!!!!) but nothing seemed to gel. So I will share with you the terrible thing that happened last Saturday.

I had to take a Standardized Test called the PRAXIS. This is some kind of teaching test that is supposed to determine whether I know enough about Language Arts to be a competent purveyor of them, them being the language arts. Unfortunately for the makers of the test, I LOVE tests!! I LOVE to sharpen my Number 2 pencils. I LOVE to darken in the circles as thoroughly as possible!! In fact, I am an AWESOME test taker and so I believe I actually raped and pillaged the test. The test creators will sob as they behold my awesomeness, because there is no test I cannot conquer. I may not turn out to be a great English teacher, but on paper I look DAMN GOOD!!!

Anyway, I had to be there at 7:30 a.m. which is stressful enough, but I also had to wake up MA before I left, because she was going to the beach for a week with her friend. That’s how it is when you’re the mother; everyone else’s needs come before your own. When my kids have standardized tests at school, they get lots of attention and a hot breakfast before they leave. When I am going to take a standardized test, I spend the morning running around screaming like a maniac and don’t have time for a granola bar, let alone a hot breakfast. I had to wake MA up and then, while she lurched off to the bathroom like a zombie, I investigated her suitcase.

MA has not quite mastered the art of packing. Apparently she interpreted ‘week at the beach’ as ‘month away from closet’ and so packed accordingly. I removed eight pairs of jeans, ten pairs of shorts and four dresses. I then repacked two pairs of jeans, five pairs of shorts and one dress while MA stared at herself in the mirror, eyes glazed over and mouth slightly open. Then we spent ten minutes arguing about the number of shoes she was going to take along. “I am NOT going to be like you mother,” she snarled, “and only take ONE pair of shoes to go with everything!!!” Wow, she cut me deep there. I callously limited her to four pairs of shoes and rushed out of the room, telling her to have fun. I ran downstairs, jumped in the car, and headed for campus.

On the way, I realized I had not eaten breakfast. Oh well, too late now. While I was rushing off to campus, Stalin called me so MA could say goodbye one last time. They had gone through the McDonald’s drive-in and were munching on their Egg McMuffins while they were talking to me. Really, do you feel the love??? By the time I got to campus, I was starving and it was too late to do anything about it.

I entered the education building and found the classroom where they were administering the test. I took my seat and arranged my pencils. I was ready to conquer. The proctor read about 800 pages of directions, including all the ways we could get thrown out of the test. I had an immediate, hysterical urge to do all the things she listed, but managed to control myself. And then she delivered a final blow: we could not leave the room until the test was over. In other words, whether I finished in one hour or two, I was stuck in the room until she ordered us to put our pencils down. I am usually the first one done, so this did not make me happy, particularly since I was now hungry enough to eat the test and all the number two pencils.

She instructed us to open our packets and the test began. It was pretty easy and I was done in just over an hour, leaving me plenty of time to ponder the wall. I don’t do well with unstimulating time. So I got up and asked to go to the bathroom. She agreed, so I grabbed my wallet and got out before she changed her mind. I made a quick visit to the bathroom, mostly so I could blow my nose. Spring brings lots of blooming things and with those blooms comes the pollen. So I gave my nose a few hearty honks, then hurried out and over to the vending machines. I bought a Hershey bar and inhaled it in about three bites. Then I composed myself and headed back into the classroom.

I stared at the wall for awhile, then I decided to check over my test. I hate doing that because I hate second guessing myself, but I had circled several questions I needed to go back and review. Elevated blood sugar might possibly change my outlook on a few of the answers. I bent my head over my test studiously, thinking through my answers. And something dropped onto my test with an audible noise.

“What the….?” I thought to myself, confused and then I saw it. A booger had dropped out of my nose and onto my test. A lovely, dried up piece of mucous was now lying in the middle of my $79 test booklet. Apparently when I blew my nose, in my rush to get my Hershey bar, I didn’t do a thorough check of the nasal passages. The concrete evidence of that was now covering answer C on question 72.

I have a horror of boogers. I can handle vomit, I do ok with poops, but mucous elicits a very visceral reaction in me. It’s so slimy and green and just NASTY!! And one of my worst social nightmares is that I am talking to someone, thinking myself very witty and charming, only to discover there has been a bat in the cave the entire time I was babbling. I get cold chills just thinking about it. Boogers are gross.

Now I was in a panic. First of all, who had seen me with the booger peeping out of my nostril? Um….EVERYONE!!! Great. I took a deep breath and put it behind me. Nothing I could do about it now. Which left me with the second, most pressing problem: how to handle the booger?

Several options presented themselves: I could pick up the test booklet and fling the booger, but it might land on someone which was too horrible for me to contemplate. That’s one of the scenarios that totally shuts down the rational mind. I could do the thumb/forefinger flick, but again, the possibility of a hitting a human victim was unbearable. I opted for casually picking it up and dropping it on the floor under the table.

Only here’s what happened. I gingerly picked up and tried to drop it on the floor, but it stuck to my finger. So I tried to use the other finger to flick it and it attached itself to that finger. There then followed almost a full minute of me trying to dislodge the booger from my finger, instead managing to shift it from finger to finger, while I got more and more flustered. My face was turning red; I could feel it. My eyes were welling up. Surely all eyes in the classroom were focused on the primal battle that was taking place between woman and booger. On one level, I was imagining it as a movie scene, the back and forth of the fingers, the flushing face, the audience howling with laughter. But mostly, I was imagining just getting RID OF THE DAMN BOOGER!!!!

Finally the friggin’ thing dropped to the ground. I expected the entire room to erupt in spontaneous applause, but apparently, they hadn’t noticed the epic battle after all. Hastily, I put my head down on the desk and tried to compose myself. In the Battle of the Booger, I had won, but it wasn’t something I wanted to brag about. Mostly, I wanted to crawl into a hole and die a slow, mucous free death.

As soon as the test ended, I shot out the door, rushed to my car and drove away from the campus without looking back. I had conquered the booger today, but there is always another one in the wings, waiting to rear its ugly head at an inauspicious moment. Next time I take a standardized test, I will make sure I have a full packet of tissues, a mirror and some hand sanitizer at the ready just in case a booger should fall!!