Day 86.

Brad was 7 and in the 3rd grade. He was sitting at his desk 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. It will never be forgotten. It is a story that will be recounted at his graduation formal dinner. Brad 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 and I need it 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. When she gets to his desk she is going to say, “Brad what have you done?” and everyone will look, and the laughter will rock the building. As the teacher is walking toward him, a classmate named Susie is carrying a goldfish bowl that is filled with water. Susie trips in front of the teacher and inexplicably dumps the bowl of water in the Brad’s lap. As he leaps to his feet Brad pretends to be angry, but all the while is saying to himself, “Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Jesus!”

Now suddenly, instead of being the object of ridicule, Brad 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, Susie. She tries to help, but they tell her to get out. “You’ve done enough.” Finally, at the end of the day, as they are waiting for the bus, Brad walks over to Susie and whispers, “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” Susie whispers back, “I wet my pants once too.”

Brad and Susie didn’t grow up to be girlfriend or boyfriend or anything, but for the rest of his life Brad remembered how Susie saved him from the ultimate humiliation. They never spoke of it again, but Brad never forgot. That was his snapshot of Susie. What will peoples snapshot of you be like? TBC