Keeping Up?

Alright, so I don’t always think ahead…actually I don’t always think. Period.

Today, one of the eighth-graders let it slip that we were having Frito chili pie for lunch. (He was trying to make sure the class realized they needed to get to lunch on time… not two or three minutes after the bell because the overbearing teacher would insist, as she always insisted, that they all be finished with work and silent before they were dismissed.) Now the thought of Frito chili pie was pleasant to me, but, for once, I decided to obey my better judgment and opt for a lower fat diet. After the little magpies left, I scrounged around in my corner cabinet and managed to find some pretzels left over from the last academic meet. That would do. I filled a paper cup with them, replenished my coffee cup, and settled down in front of my computer to do e-mail instead of lunch. It turns out that those pretzels were of the modern, intrepid variety—mustard covered; they tasted strangely of pickles. However, when one is absorbed in e-mails, she munches contentedly without taking note of it. She also drinks her cup of lukewarm almond-flavored coffee, not noticing the sloshing and the whooshing in her stomach. Suffice it to say, I remembered too late that mustard and warm water is an excellent emetic. (That’s what all the musty detective novels say, anyway, when the heroine is full of chagrin for having inadvertently gulped down nasty-tasting arsenic).

You will be proud of me. I kept my cool…and kept my lunch…stilled the roarings and rumblings of my stomach, and survived past the critical next two hours. Today, this blog ought to have been called: Keeping Down.