Every so often I think back to 3rd Grade when I sat next to an orange haired fella named Jim. His last name started with a B, that's alls I remember. I always found him a bit peculiar, because he was one of the first people I'd ever met in real life with orange hair. His hair was so bright orange that even his eyelashes were orange too, and they sorta made his eyes look like venus flytraps. Not unlike the white eyelashes on my grampa's little white dog named Lumpy... for all we know, her eyes could have very well been venus flytraps (Lumpy wasn't the most friendly dog.)
Jim also had asthma, and I found this perplexing as well. I'd never heard of such a thing until we were playing Marco Polo during recess and he started a-coughing and a-whooping like nothing I've ever heard before. The asthmatic-induced noises he made were demonic to say the least. I always wished I could have asthma too, because it always seemed to get him out of running the mile for Phy Ed. Plus I have to admit, I always wondered what those inhalers tasted like.
One morning in class our teacher Mrs. Hauser handed out Physical Fitness cards that we were going to fill out in the week to come. I don't know if they still do this in schools, but during "Physical fitness week" they'd weigh you, measure you, and test your endurance on things like the 100 yard dash, relay races with chalkboard erasers, rope climbing (reeeowwll!), pull ups, and so on. Your basic public school lab rat thing.
While skimming over my Physical Fitness card, I noticed a term I hadn't seen before. The two words SKIN FOLD were on the card next to an empty box that was to be filled in with SKIN FOLD results.
Skin Fold? Says I to myself. What the fuck is that?
My mind started racing. The only thing I could picture in my head was a line of kids at the nurse's office holding their fitness cards and waiting for their turn to sit on a table. The nurse would then peel the skin of our scalps off to look at our brains, and then "fold" it back over to close things up.
Um. No thank you.
I felt a little ill and wished I had it in me to make myself blow chunks so I could go home for the day. But I just couldn't do it. I figured my ol' pally orange haired Jimmy might have some insight on what this skin fold business was all about, because when you have asthma, you must go to the doctor and get tested a lot. So perhaps he'd had a skin fold or two in his day. So I turned around and axsed him.
"Jimmy what's a Skin Fold?"
"Wha?"
"Skin Fold. Look it's on our cards."
"Oooh. That's when they slice a piece of skin off your dick." (pardon the French, but that's exactly what he said.)
At that moment my throat felt like it dropped into my stomach, turned into powder, and settled to my feet. Not a gall damn split second later, Mrs. Hauser got up and initiated our daily lifeless and robotic reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance. All I could do was lip synch the words that day, as I was too paralyzed in fear to be 100 percent patriotic.
After a long morning of mentally shitting my drawers, we had lunch. I could only take a few bites out of my salami sandwich because all I could picture in my head was the school nurse holding a big tube of salami and a knife. Recess came and went, and suddenly the hour of the Skin Fold was looming. Sure enough, it was Phy Ed time and the "Skin Fold Line" was formed. I was wondering why the girls were also in line, but fear was overriding taking that thought any further.
About 10 kids ahead of me I saw the nurse holding the Skin Fold apparatus. It was an evil looking thing; a big white hunk of plastic that had what looked like a big nasty ass narrow pair of pliers on the end of it. I was getting dizzy at the thought of undoing my Star Wars belt and dropping my grey corduroys when my turn came. I was so freaked that I wasn't even paying attention to those being skin-folded before me. I just stood there in fear, making baby steps to the front of that line to be re-circumcised.
And so my turn came. I was numb. In a trance. The nurse said "Just lift your shirt up a little, honey. This won't hurt." The Skin Fold gun approached my 3rd grade side flab in slow motion and gave me a mild pinch, she wrote the measurement down on my card, and off I went to shoot hoops with the other kids in the post-skin fold waiting room of the gym.
Jimmy was there, looked at me and asked "How did it go?"
I wanted to tell him that his description of the skin fold procedure wasn't the most accurate, but then thought maybe because he had asthma, perhaps his skin folds were performed differently like that. So I just said "It was okay," and ran off to the drinking fountain to alleviate my cottonmouth.
I sipped the weird tasting school water and felt the writhing tension in my belly that had been there all day finally begin to back off. I thanked my lucky stars that my scalp, wiener, and sanity were somehow still in tact. Which I guess isn't all that different from what I'm thankful for every other day of my life now that I think about it..
