Come
with me
to a third grade classroom...
There is a
nine-year-old kid sitting at
his desk and all of
a sudden, there is a
puddle between his feet and
the front of
his pants are wet. He thinks his
heart is
going to stop because he cannot
possibly
imagine how this has happened. It's
never
happened before, and he knows that
when
the boys find out he will never hear
the end of
it. When the girls find out,
they'll never speak
to him again as long
as
he
lives.
The
boy
believes his heart is going to stop;
he puts his
head down and prays this
prayer, 'Dear God, this
is an emergency!
I need help now! Five minutes
from now
I'm
dead
meat.'
He
looks up
from his prayer and here comes
the teacher with
a look in her eyes that
says he has
been
discovered.
As
the
teacher is walking toward him, a
class mate
named Xion is carrying a
goldfish bowl that is
filled with water.
Xion trips in front of the
teacher and
inexplicably dumps the bowl of water
in
the
boy's
lap...
The
boy
pretends to be angry, but all the
while is
saying to himself, 'Thank you,
Lord! Thank
you,
Lord!'
Now
all of a
sudden, instead of being the
object of ridicule,
the boy is the object
of sympathy. The teacher
rushes him
downstairs and gives him gym shorts
to
put on while his pants dry out. All the
other
children are on their hands and
knees cleaning
up around his desk. The
sympathy is wonderful.
But as life would
have it, the ridicule that
should have
been his has been transferred to
someone
else
Xion.
She
tries to
help, but they tell her to get
out. You've done
enough,
you
klutz!'
Finally,
at
the end of the day, as they are
waiting for the
bus, the boy walks over
to Xion and whispers,
'You did that on
purpose, didn't you?' Xion
whispers
back, 'I wet my pants
once
too.'