John Ms Pym example essay topic

John Bunn was feeling poorly. He lay in his bed and groaned, staring at the ceiling. 'O, ' he groaned. 'Ohh, I feel poorly. ' John had in fact been feeling poorly for some time now.

In fact, he hardly remembered a time when he had not been feeling poorly, off and on. He had felt poorly in school. 'Ms. Pym, I feel poorly,' he would say, and would hold his belly. 'Go to the bathroom, John,' she'd tell him, and so off he would go.

Sometimes, he remembered, he would raise his hand, feeling too poorly to speak. He would raise two fingers to signal Ms. Pym that he felt poorly in a certain way; she would usually just nod to him, or say, 'Go ahead, John,' before continuing with her reading. Sometimes, John remembered, he would forget to put up two fingers and would just raise his hand. This usually happened when he was feeling very poorly indeed, and hoped that she would notice him quickly, lest something bad happen. Once Ms. Pym knew about him, she would just motion for him to go, often without even pausing in her reading. She had learned her lesson.

Although he had never been a particularly analytical child, it didn't take too long before John began to learn a little about how he felt poorly. John found that he felt poorly at all kinds of times, but it seemed to him that he could count on feeling poorly whenever it was story time. Joh loved stories; he could listen to them forever, and often found himself caught up in events that were all imagination. Sometimes, oftentimes, he would begin to feel poorly just when the story was getting good, and he wanted to brave it out and see how things turned out. But he raised his hand instead, quickly; he had learned his lesson, too. ' Ohh, my stomach,' said John.

He felt very poorly today. He turned over on his other side. That was better. 'That's better. ' He closed his eyes.

Let me go, Ms. Pym. Let me go! No, that wasn't better at all. He turned onto his back and bent his knees, leaning them inward against each other.

My hand is up, Ms. Pym! Ms. Pym had been slow to recognize his hand that day. Until that time, the first few days of grade 2, she had been very patient with John when he felt poorly, letting him go to the bathroom whenever he needed. John was glad; it made a big difference in how often he felt poorly if he was allowed to go to the bathroom whenever he did feel poorly. And Ms. Pym was patient; she did make a few comm nets to him, 'My, you are a very busy fellow, aren't you, John?' or, 'Off again so soon, John?' or 'are you sure you have to go already, John?' But she had always let him go.

This time, however, Ms. Pym was moving slowly. She didn't raise her eyes from the book when John's hand went up. She moved her head a little bit, and John thought she saw him, but she went on reading. She must have not seen my hand, John thought.

He raised it higher, stretching his shoulder. Ms. Pym continued reading, seeming very engrossed by the compelling story John's innards began to grumble. Was that loud enough to hear with my ears, or just inside me? He wasn't sure. Ge dungglebaoww. A classmate sitting cross-legged on the rug, immediately ahead, turned to look at him, startled.

John blushed. 'Sorry,' he whispered. 'I'm feeling a little poorly. ' But she had turned back and was listening again. The interchange had not caught Ms. Pym's attention. John began to grow worried.

His belly began to dance and moan. The girl ahead inched forward. John waved his hand. He grimaced. 'Oh... hu-hum.. ' he pursed his lips and hummed. He was getting cramps.

Ms. Pym read on. John leaned back, arching his torso and supporting his weight on his right hand and his bent-under knees. It hurt his feet and ankles nad knees, but it relieved his belly a little. He kept his left hand int he air, and waved it frantically.

He ventured a whisper: 'Ms. Pym? Ms. Pym!' Her eyes looked up; she frowned at him. 'You will have to wait, John. ' She began to read again. His voice lapsed in: 'But Ms. Pym... ' She shook her head, once, to the side, and frowned into the book as she read.

John arched his back like a marlin. 'Ms. Pym!' he almost shouted. ' 'Sit down, John!' Ms. Pym raised her voice with her class for the first time. She looked at him icily.

'Sit down and behave yourself!' John fought to sit, to stand, to convey, but it was too late: he was beaten: the worst began. The stench and sound were immediate; he felt the burning wetness, the filth, and the shame a moment later. The yells of fear and disgust and shock were drowned out by his own solitary horror. He stood to his feet in agony, futilely trying to bend and stiffen his legs to avoid the back of his jeans, but he was covered anyway.

He stared straight ahead, just registering Ms. Pym's short, 'John, quickly, to the bathroom, John. Off you go. ' And off he went, lurching and dripping and tearful. The rug and the story were over.

John lay in bed, feeling poorly, but chuckling through his discomfort and the shame recollected in his invalid's tranquility. He had changed schools soon after; his parents had requested a cross-boundary assignment for him, and he had been relieved. Ms. Pym had never hindered his going again, and there had been no repeat incidents, but the stigma of what had occurred hung over John like the odor of memory and made it difficult for him to find acceptance among his classmates. He had needed a fresh start. He had felt poorly since a child, and he felt poorly now. 'I used to feel so poorly, ' he sang to himself, 'and am so poorly now.

Oh why do I feel poorly, oh why and also how?' John's teenage years had been spent feeling poorly, and he had had a few more worst things too. There was the time he felt poorly in biology class while the professor showed them a film of a live birth. John had fainted and soiled his drawers. Later, in mathematics, John had felt poorly during a mid-term and stained his underwear before he exerted some real muscle power and stopped the carnage. His teacher, Mr. Thompson, had permitted him to suspend his exam for a bathroom break, quite contrary to usual practice; John had attained a certain notoriety which served him in such times. And John had been saved from a nasty beating by feeling poorly on a 1 km run during gym class when he withered before a bully's punching onslaught, only to spontaneously and without volition respond with an artillery of liquid waste that shot out of (and some said through) his shorts and rendered the bully retching, fleeing, and thoroughly vanquished.

It was said that the bully felt poorly that day, too. John lay in his bed, feeling poorly, and reflecting on how poorly he had felt in the past. As he lay, he lost track of time, and slipped into a sort of coma, muscles relaxing and mind retreating into memory... When John came to himself, he was lying in a mess of filth, the air redolent with stench, and the floor of his bedroom covered in stinking brown sludge to above his box spring.

'Oh crikey, the smell; I feel poorly,' he gasped, and fainted. He slipped through layers of unconsciousness, recalling his graduation, soiling his robe just before going onstage to get his diploma, his first day at work, shaking hand with the pretty secretary while trying to hide the stain on his backside with a hastily grabbed binder (her appointment book), he last day at work, being discovered on the toilet for three consecutive hours, asleep and with the bowl overflowing with slop, and the day he took to his bed at last, feeling poorly, and vowing to never leave his place until he was better or dead. A siren passed his window; John started, awake for a moment. The sludge had covered his desk and raised his mattress (not yet saturated and still floating) to sit atop the sea like the ark of Noah. And still John flowed. He gripped his pillow -- a nightmare of evil-smelling slime -- and lived his last moments in fascinated horror.

'I have lived, and I have laughed, and I have felt poorly,' he said aloud, the level rising and pinning his head to the rough stippled ceiling. There had been so much to do, so much to say, so much to see... John's final words before he slipped beneath the waves and drowned were a plaintive, 'I-feel-poorly... ' He did, you know. But no more. END.