Today, my teaching partner mentioned that one of the girls I journal with turned in her journal with something nasty on it. She was at the back table and I was picking up something off the printer. She spoke a little longer but I had tuned her out, my forehead against the whiteboard, and gagged. Yes, I gagged. Not once, but multiple times. Deep convulsive, non-productive heaves. Hypersensitive gag reflex. You can Google it and learn that for many people, it occurs during dental work, or with certain smells. For me, it is a visual trigger. I don’t even have to see it. A description, a memory, a retell (like this) is often enough.
And that brings me to the title of today’s slice. Maybe they talk about “icky things at school” with primary teachers, but I wasn’t given a heads-up in my teacher training program. I bet they still only give the “wear gloves with body fluids” talk. I bet they don;t describe the inconvenient times and places those icky things can surprise you. They don’t tell you that homework comes in with “stuff” on it sometimes. Or that you have to throw out moldy library books that sat in someone’s wet backpack for weeks. Or that vegetables in a plastic bag will, eventually, liquefy. They don’t warn condiment haters like me that kids will come back from lunch with ketchup on their face, their shirt…..
The funny thing is that I can do blood. Just not any other nasty stuff.
The offending journal was bagged and tossed into the trash.
Ms. B, you deserve a medal.
booksandbassets 
Oh so much is not taught in teachers college and so much that is done and handled by teachers only teachers know about and appreciate. Great slice by the way.
I hope you weren’t gagging as you wrote this. There are some nasty, undetermined items that do come to school. Do you suppose if colleges told you about some things, the pool of teacher candidates would drop?
I worked in a Vet’s office through high school and university and I saw some nasty stuff. Somehow those little people manage to create even nastier goop and grime!
Who hasn’t received something from a student with something “nasty” on it? One more thing people who are not teachers have no clue about, We do have such an easy job. don’t we?
Oh my goodness! I can see myself doing the same things. I don’t do blood either though. 🙂
I did not know there was a name for this! My husband has this. He grew up on an farm and can handle anything….except stupid human tricks dealing with sticking something in your nose and it coming out your mouth. He even gagged on AFV’s video of the baby eating spaghetti that sneezes and spaghetti comes out her nose. Now I know it’s hypersensitive gag reflex.
Ick! I suppose those teachers’ college people thought the kids would be so cute you wouldn’t notice the nasty stuff. I’ll tell you…the effective part of this slice is that you didn’t define the nasty stuff, so we can eat imagine what would disgust us most.