[more poker content later in the day. hopefully]

Back when I was in 8th grade, I was never one of the cool kids. I was always middle of the road, never one of the "popular", but never classified as a "nerd", either. You'd never know it by seeing me now, but when I was 13, I was one of the smallest boys in our grade. A tiny, skinny, blonde rat of a child, that couldn't wouldn't have been able to hold his own in a fight, even if it happened to be with a mentally challenged 3rd grade girl. I was that small. It wasn't until 9th grade that I started my growth spurt.

In 8th grade, we had to take gym class. I'm sure our school was like many others in that gym class was mandatory. I've always loved gym, and always been above average athletically. Always fast, and fairly coordinated for being so underdeveloped. During the year I was 13, I had gym 2nd hour. The way that our school was set-up, you'd walk into the gym, and the locker room was to your left, down a set of stairs, and in the basement.

This particular locker room always scared me, because it was a small, enclosed area. Also, there were no individual showers, only a gang shower. You know the ones I'm talking about; just a big pole with many shower heads prodtruding from it, in the middle of a tiled room. Having not even started puberty like many of my classmates-hell, I don't think I'm entirely done with that process-the thought of having to take a shower in a gang shower was a frightening. Luckily, puberty saved me this embarrasment. Yes, puberty saved me. See, little kids don't stink. Unless they pee their pants, or it's been weeks since they've touched water, it's just a fact of nature that little kids don't stink. The don't have the abundance of highly overproductive sweat glands yet.

This particular day started like any other. As first period let out, I made my way down to the locker room, and opened my locker. The room, I'm sure, was full of immature shit like fart noises emanating from armpits, and towel snapping. Normal 8th grade locker room behavior. Being miniature, I was rather good at avoiding confrontations with the towel snappers, and if I found myself in such a situation, I was always fast enough to avoid getting welts.

I changed, made my way back upstairs to the gym, and there were only a handful of people up there, including one of my friends, Sean. He and I were approximately the same size, though if I remember correctly, he was smaller. Believe me, that's difficult. Anyhow, we're goofing around, and notice a small gym mat sitting on the floor. The kind of gym mat that's thin, has multiple colored sections, and normally attaches to the wall with velcro so that basketball players don't crash into the brick wall, in the event they come through a layup too fast. For whatever reason, this one wasn't on the wall. Being the little spazzes we were, we started goofing around on the mat, when someone-and I can't remember who-screamed out "WRASSLE!". So we did. All kids have wrestled at one point in their lives, and it's not until I got into college that I realized that wrestling is inherently gay. Oh boy, let me roll around on a sweaty mat and get my balls wrenched on for a bit. That'll be fun. We were little kids and didn't know any better, though. So we wrestled. As with many wrestling matches, this one ended up with us fiercely battling with our little boy muscles, when we fell.

The mat that we were on had 7 sections to it, and was easily foldable. As we were rolling around on the mat, another guy, Dennis, decided that it would be funny if he rolled us up inside the mat like a burrito. Around this time, more kids are in the gym, laughing and cheering. Yeah, fun times. Dennis gets the mat completely around us, and we're basically stuck there, grappled. Stuck. I can't see anything but the bottom of legs, so it was one hell of a suprise when someone gets the bright idea to jump up and down on us, repeatedly. Hard.

See, herein lies the problem. At the time Sean and I were binded together, my stomach was pressed up against his hip, and if you can't see where this is going, you're dumb. With every jump, I got more and more concerned that the outcome would be anything less than horrific. I was going to have to change schools. I was going to be ridiculed everywhere I went. Kids would whisper to eachother, and laugh at me. Did they stop jumping? Of course not.

"Sto...guh. Stop! Plea...oof. Please stop jumping. Urrrrrrrrrrr."

That didn't work, and I quickly hoped for death, so that at least I'd have a reason for what was about to happen. I'm sure that Sean was thoroughly confused when he felt something warm against his hip. Warm and wet. It was at that moment that the jumping stopped and we were unrolled. Freedom! I took off like a cracked out midget, and headed directly to the locker room, hoping that the liquid hadn't seeped all the way through my shorts and underwear. I wasn't so lucky. It took Sean-winged by a few other kids-a few minutes to make it downstairs as well.

"Did you piss on my new Opus shirt?"

Sean's parents had just bought him a new Bloom County t-shirt. I never understood that cartoon. It wasn't funny in 8th grade, and it's still not funny now, although Sean thought he was the coolest while wearing it. It didn't look so cool with a big ring of my urine on it, though.

"Uh, no. It's spit." I said sheepishly. I wasn't very bright.

"You're telling me that you spit that much on me?" he said while pointing at his shirt. "It's YELLOW!"

What else could I possibly say to this? I had another 10 years before I'd ever be able to use "Sorry man, I was drunk." as an excuse. The force of being jumped on while my bladder was trapped caused me to piss on his new Opus shirt. He quickly went to change, and I did the same. I threw out my underwear, and freeballed it for the rest of the day, but I still had to get through gym class.

I went upstairs and sat in my rollcall row, the teacher asked my why I wasn't dressed, and Sean screamed "HE PEED ON ME!". He looked at me with a "Is this true?" expression on his face, and when I avoided eye contact, he shook his head and moved along. Kids laughed. We were playing hackeysack that day, so at least I wouldn't have to run around in my jeans. I, the kid that pees on other kids, had to play hackeysack with someone nobody wanted to partner with; the new kid, Ray. He was big, and doofy, and smelled like poop.

In case you're wondering, I never did take a shower that day. When you think about it, it's pretty funny that I sat through the rest of the day, and nobody said anything about me smelling like pee. Kids are kids. They'll call you out when you smell funny, and not feel a bit of remorse about doing it. I'm not sure why they never did. Lucky for me, this whole thing blew over pretty quickly, and was never left with any derogatory nicknames. At least, not for this incident.