No one I hung out with in highschool liked P.E. lessons. Waiting in the hallway before the P.E. teachers arrived was agony - we never knew what activity we’d be doing and they always seemed to take ages to get there, extending the time we had to worry whether it would be dodgeball or track running or something equally awful. We would all moan and discuss ways of getting out of class, although none of us were brave enough to dare try, of course. In the segregated changing areas, and as a very late bloomer, I was the “get-undressed-as-quickly-as-you-can” type of girl, and oftentimes would be the first to be ready outside of the changing room awaiting the teacher.
I had just finished stuffing my sports’ bra when I heard a commotion in the hallway - I quickly pulled on my tearaway tracksuit bottoms and hurried out the door to see what was going on.
A group of about ten boys - mostly wrestlers and footballers (I religiously attended all wrestling practices because I was a teenage girl with a penchant for lycra-clad teenage boys) - were standing holding what looked like a water-filled plastic bag.
It wasn’t just filled with water though - it also contained a bright orange goldfish.
I stood there dumbly, thankful for the opportunity to witness the following scene:
One of the boys untied the knot at the top of the bag, as the hallway echoed with murmurs and whispers, and a few more witnesses trickled slowly out from their respective changing rooms.
The small crowd parted so that one boy - a wrestler I was particularly fond of due to reasons I will not be sharing here - stood holding the bag aloft, basking in the warmth and glow of unashamed adoration and popularity that is only reserved for a select few highschool students.
Some of the water was tipped onto the floor, and I stood there slack-jawed and increasingly worried about the goldfish’s fate.
In one smooth motion, the wrestler tipped the remaining contents of the bag - goldfish and goldfish water - into his mouth, and swallowed.
Everyone fell quiet for just a split-second, until he opened his mouth again, revealing a pink tongue, perfect teeth, and nothing else.
Cheers rang out, people screamed and laughed, and I looked around wondering why the P.E. teachers hadn’t arrived yet and why we were all still foolishly unsupervised at that moment.
The boy held out his hand in a “stop” motion, and we, his audience, fell into a hushed silence.
He then stuck his fingers down his throat, and we watched in horror as he vomited that poor goldfish back into the plastic bag.
A bag that now held a small amount of water, a miraculously-still-alive goldfish, and a few bits of undigested food.
That boy became our hero.
Cheers erupted as if The Beatles had arrived; the P.E. teachers turned up and one of the other boys quickly tied the bag closed and shoved the traumatized goldfish into his backpack.
The remaining students came out of the changing rooms confused at the noise and angrily demanded to know what they had missed. The story of what had happened, dismissed by teachers and embellished by students who hadn’t even been there, spread like wildfire, and it was all anyone talked about for weeks. I felt lucky to have been a witness, to hold a first-person’s account of watching a boy swallow a fish.
We never waited very long for the P.E. teachers to show up after that.
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