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Ah, Religion class. Perhaps the most serious, quiet, and calm class of the day.  I was
eager to begin, having just gotten a brand new pen with which to take notes. When our teacher began to write things down on the board, I began writing energetically in my notebook. Perhaps it was too energetic for my new pen.

In retrospect, I probably should have put the pen down when it began oozing ink from the tip at an alarming rate. But, alas, I believed that this would be but a temporary setback, and a minor one at that, and so I continued to write my notes; albeit, I wrote them far more quickly and far less legibly.

When the ink switched from oozing to actually running out at a steady rate, I turned the pen point up to more closely examine the problem. The ink stopped flowing from the pen, and I firmly believe it did this solely for the purpose of lulling me into a false sense of security.

I turned it this way and that, examining the pen with all the seriousness of a homicide detective studying a crime scene. I found no reason to cease my examination  when the ink once again began to ooze out from the tip, though the pen was being held point-up.

Oh, how I wish that I had set it down. Or, better still, flung the accursed thing as far from myself as I could. But alas, I merely noted this with mild curiosity, and continued to look for the cause of the leak. It was when I unscrewed the top of the pen that disaster struck.

No longer did ink ooze out, it gushed forth in a manner reminiscent of the explosion of Mt. Vesuvius. Ink splattered everywhere; over my notes, hands, face, and white shirt. I stared in silent horror at the black, goopy monstrosity that had, at one time in the not-so-distant past, been my perfectly good pen.

At this point, I realized that everybody in the class room was staring at me. Those
unlucky students who had sat close enough to me to be caught in the fallout had recoiled, moving away from me quickly and with a force almost sufficient to tip their desks over.

I was simply unable to do anything other than look from my ink filled hands, to the small puddle on my desk, to the flabbergasted teacher, then back to what had been my pen. To my undying horror, I heard someone begin to laugh. They tried to smother it, an action which, though it did not stop the laughter, caused the laugher to snort with such long duration and such incredible volume that it caused others to begin laughing.

I managed to keep my composure until I got to the front of the room to deposit the sad, goopy remains of my pen in the trash can. At this point, the teacher looked right at me and said: “The last time I saw something like that, it was on a Discovery Channel special about squids.”

By this time I was blushing so furiously that I could feel waves of heat emanating from my ears.  I feared that I had turned the color of an overripe tomato. I held my breath for a long moment, trying not cry. I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat, and screwed up my courage.

I managed to ask the teacher to allow me to go to the girl’s rest  room and wash the ink off, and she agreed. I held out my ink-sticky hand for a hall pass, and she told me it would be fine if I went without one right now.

Looking back on it, I have decided that that was, perhaps, the most exciting moment of my elementary school career. Certainly, religion class had never been so exceptionally interesting!