• theangryseal@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I don’t know why, but this reminded me of one of the absolute worst moments of my life.

    I was bullied as a kid, and when middle school hit I wasn’t keen on dressing out for gym in front of those bullies. My gym teacher was probably the biggest dick on planet earth and every three days he’d suspend me for three days for not dressing out. I was suspended for most of 6th grade.

    My mom had had enough and threatened me, “I swear to you, if you get suspended one more time over a zero in gym class I will throw your Nintendo 64 in the creek. I mean it!”

    Guess what my dumb ass did? I left my gym clothes at home. I was fucking desperate and I went around begging everyone I knew, “can I please borrow your gym clothes?” I finally managed to trade a copy of Donkey Kong Country and 10 dollars for a copy of Extreme G and as a bonus I could borrow dude’s gym clothes.

    He handed them to me in a plastic grocery bag and I raced off to gym class. That big, tall, bald bastard of a gym teacher said, “I guess it’s time for your suspension, eh Grassman?” “No sir, I’m dressing out!”(He called me Grassman because I forgot my flag football things and used big giant blades of grass).

    I ran back to the boys locker room and slid those clothes from the bag. Oh. My. God!

    The smell of axe body spray, ass, and armpits hit me like a ton of bricks. I powered through it, put on the nasty ass shirt, and vomited in my mouth. I just couldn’t bring myself to put the shorts on. I was nearly in tears because I knew I was doomed. I put my clothes back on and I could still smell it on me. I walked out and tried to explain it to the asshole. Nope. Suspended.

    I really did think my mom was going to throw my N64 in the creek. She didn’t, thank goodness. Instead she got really pissed and called the school. When I got back I was called to the office and the principal asked me to explain why I had been suspended so many times. He then called Mr. Bald asshole into the office and let him have it for suspending me so many times over not dressing out. “You are denying this young man an education entirely because of gym?” I’d love to have been a fly on the wall after he sent me to class.

    I happily took my zeros after that and slept on the bleachers. 1st period was my nap period.

    I will never forget that smell though. I can still smell it, seriously. It hit me so hard that 28 years later, I can still smell it. Gah.

    • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Oh man thats rough, I’m sorry you had to go through that. Speaking of smells you can’t forget though, I have my own experience. Sorta, for me it was also a taste.

      When I was in highschool a buddy of mine and I broke into an abandoned pool house. It was winter and about 3 am, there was a deep fog thick enough that we couldn’t see eachother 10 feet apart. The pool house was surrounded by a chain link fence that had an opaque blue fabric over it so you couldn’t see inside and the gate was locked with a thick padlock. We came back with bolt cutters and cut our way in instead of jumping the fence because I guess we thought it’d be cooler? Idk. Anyway we got inside through a small slat window only about a foot in height and about 10 ft off the ground. We dicked around, exploded a toilet, broke a mirror, you know how it be. Anyway eventually we found a fire extinguisher and at this point I should make it clear that this was a poolhouse that closed down in my early childhood. It’d been shut for a long ass time. So this fire extinguisher was atleast ten years expired. So obviously we used the fire extinguisher. The powder that came out was yellow and filled the room. It smelt of sulphur, chlorine, and rot. It tasted like burnt rubber. I fled the room as quickly as a possibly could coughing and retching but I could not get that taste out of my mouth nor the smell out of my noise. It made my head hurt just from the sensory overload. It took about a week for me to stop smelling it.

      Anyway we also put this lifeguard chair in a tree. The camera doesn’t fully capture the fog though

      • theangryseal@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Man I miss being young. Even with the horrible taste of expired fire extinguisher I’d bet this is a favorite memory. :)

        • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          Its certainly treasured, it was also only a week after meeting my SO (who I am still with 5 years later) and I was texting her the whole time. You’d probably still consider me young though :P

          • theangryseal@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Oh yeah, you had that pic just hanging around on your phone. I’m guessing 20s.

            Dude, I know you’ve heard it a thousand times, but I was 22 yesterday, no shit.