OK, this was a new one from Allie.
“Some mornings, if I walk, I come in the side door to the elementary school. There’s a stairway there no one uses, so I sit down and change shoes. They’re just starting school, so I can walk across the bridge to here and not get cold.
“My old fifth grade teacher walked past me. He smiled, but I could tell he forgot my name, after only two years! Weird. You know what a migraine is?”
“Yea, some kind of headache that is like torture.”
“So they say……anyway, he got migraines. Really bad. He told us at the start of the year that he would get them and would leave school, because the pain would get so bad, he couldn’t drive.”
“So he left, then what?”
“He’d just say ‘uh-oh, I have to go’. Supposedly, there would be stars popping in his eyes, like little sparklers. He’d put his coat on and knock on Mrs. Colden’s door. She’d come in and keep us focused, then get the principal and either he or the assistant would sit and watch us, with Mrs. Colden jumping in and out.”
“That has to be the weirdest thing I ever heard.” I later learned more about the teacher when mom became a colleague and she was the one jumping in when migraines struck. Evidently, he would make it home and lie on his bed with all lights off, because the slightest noise or smidgen of light made him feel like someone was drilling holes in his head.
He also had a dog that ate his car seats, but that’s a story for another day.