The Soiled Sundress

Being the new kid is never easy. We’ve all been new somewhere and the anxiety that accompanies navigating a foreign place is a discomfort that stays with you for a while and you never fully forget. Maybe that’s why so many people don’t like things that are “different,” such as people, places, religions, traditions, beliefs, etc. But, that’s a whole other conversation, and one I will not digress into now.

But, it might also explain why a particular lunch in the fourth grade is still so vivid in my memory. I was at a new school and had just shuffled into the lunch room. The lunchtime process at this small town elementary school was still new enough to me, and so I simply sat next to whomever I walked into the cafeteria with. Today, that person was David Something. Yeah, while the memory is quite clear, David’s full name is not. In fact, his name might not have even been David at all. But, I remember his face like he’s my own brother’s: round, pale, vacant hazel eyes, stringy straight mousy brown hair. I know, not an attractive description, so I should emphasize that he was a super nice kid. One of those kids who was a bit of a nerd, a good student, and he was super friendly and never said a bad word about anybody. So, maybe that was why I was standing next to him in line and, as a result, would spend lunch sitting next to him. 

Now David was shy, so I was not expecting a chatty lunch. But, his quiet demeanor allowed me to keep my head down and silently eat my lunch. Friend making for me had not progressed much in the handful of days I had been at the school, so I was a little lonely and hoping no one else had noticed that loneliness yet. 

I had my teeth hovering over the second half of my sandwich for a bite when David turned to look at me. I waited expectantly to see what he wanted to talk about. But then the strangest thing happened very quickly, his eyes left my face and looked down at my lap. I followed his eyes down and instinctively thought he had dropped something and was looking for it, when the dress material covering my lap was spayed with a brown-orange, chunky liquid. I jumped in my seat and screamed a little in shock. My head jolted to the right and searched David’s face for him to give me an explanation of what had just happened, when he bent his head down further and out came more nasty liquid from his mouth. This time, it hit further down my dress and onto my sandals. 

“Stop! Stop!” I yelled while trying to wiggle my way off the lunch table bench and retreat away from the table; away from David. Just as I freed my left leg from the table, a teacher came up from behind me and caught me on the shoulders. 

“Oh, dear,” she whispered in my ear, “Poor thing is sick.” My mouth dropped open, and I turned to look at her. I wanted to explain that he wasn’t the only one feeling sick, as the smell from my dress was starting to waft up into my nostrils. But, no words came to me to tell her of my own problems. However, when I turned toward her, it must have brought the smell with it, because she instantly dropped her hands from my shoulders, look down at my dress, stepped backwards away from me, and yelled in the direction of the lunch lady workers, “We need towels and a mop over here, please!” 

The next several minutes were a blur, honestly. There were many towels, adults swiping at me, urging me gently with instructions as they tried to clean me up, contact my parents and escort me to the office to be picked up. 

Back and forth between tears and quiet whimpering, my father fell into his well-worn role of lightening up the situation. The car ride was splattered with quick little jokes, such as: “That kid’s mom really needs to rethink what she’s putting in his lunchbox.” and “Well, this is a unique way for you to get out of a spelling test.” and “You know, making a kid throw up is no way to land yourself a boyfriend,” and then just a simple, “Little Lady, you stink.” 

But, it was all to no avail. I was deep in my head and panicking about what this meant for me in the 4th grade court of opinion. My father had already shot down me staying home for the rest of the day, “You can just take a quick shower while I’m eating lunch, and I can drive you back to school before I go back to the office.” So, I was going to have to face everyone. And if they didn’t already know what happened, when they saw me in a completely different outfit than I had been wearing that morning they would know. I would be an easy target as the new kid for the cruelest of puke jokes, which would most like revolve around something about me that made David throw up. Ugh! It was going to be worse than getting thrown up on.

But then I remembered.

In my mom’s latest hobby - sewing - she had gotten pretty good at making simple sundresses for me and my sister. Because we were so close in age and size, she usually just used the same pattern and material to make two dresses instead of one, and we each got one in our closets. The dress that I had worn that day was just such a dress. 

​I had a plan.

As we pulled into the driveway, I bounced out of the car and started giving my Dad instructions on where to find my sister’s identical dress. Meanwhile, he had his own instructions, as he looked at my once white sandals that were now multi-colored and had pieces of unidentifiable waste sticking to them, “Don’t you go into the house with those on,” he continued, “Your mom maybe dedicated enough to save them, so just leave them on the porch.”

Within 30 minutes, the two of us bounded back down those same porch steps, my father fortified by a hearty lunch, and myself crisp and clean in my sister’s dress and another pair of sandals from my closet. I told myself no one would remember what sandals I wore that morning, and everyone who hadn’t seen what had happened would believe I was wearing the same thing from the morning. 

And, that was the problem. 

Because of course the story had spread around, so the number of kids who didn’t know what had happened was miniscule. So, when I arrived back at school looking the same as I had before the incident, the reaction was swift, but brutal. 
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​Because, let me tell you, being the kid that someone threw up on is bad. But being the kid who people thought didn’t change their clothes after was worse. Much worse.