Muddy Monday the 13th

June 13, 2001

No, this isn't me. But it's some other guy who's muddy.

It was May 13, 1985. I was in fourth grade.

That afternoon, I was playing on the playground after lunch, enjoying the smell in the air after the previous night's rain. For whatever reason, I was running after my friend Adam when I saw him step in a mud puddle, slip, and slide into it, full-body.

About the time I saw him start to slip, I realized I had no chance in hell of stopping myself from following suit. I began my slip-and-slide into the large mud puddle as Adam was finishing his. As I came to a halt, my clothes covered in mud, Adam and I looked at each other, realizing the ridicule that would follow. A girl from our class started things off by yelling "Safe!" and motioning like an umpire.

But the most humiliating part was yet to come.

We were sent to the nurse's office for a change of clothes. Mrs. Gilday pulled out this large cardboard box with scraps of clothing in it and told us to pick out some clothes to wear. As Adam I rummaged through it, a wave of panic swept over us: the Bradys would have been embarassed to wear these clothes.

Why did these ever go out of fashion?

I ended up picking out some incredibly tiny shorts that were entirely too short for me and a pair of thin white tube socks with the stripes on them. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about (see left). The shirt was a remnant of the 70s even moreso than the rest of my styling outfit.

Adam was even worse off. He was bigger than I was (in both height and girth) and the clothes in the box were not only from the 1970s, they were fit only for small second graders.

We returned to our respective classrooms and took the expected ribbing from our peers. Even my teacher got in on the fun calling me "Mark Spitz."

Moral of the story: Monday the 13th is worse than the Friday the 13th. Especially when it rains on Sunday the 12th.