Mommy; I Have a Stomach Ache: Childhood Anxiety Fondly Remembered

The author, contemplating his next abdominal crisis. Note the sweatsuit (his favorite color).

Poor Mrs. McCabe. They didn’t train school nurses back in the eighties to deal with motherfuckers like me.

Nowadays, elementary school nurses have had their training ratcheted up a few ticks; they’re trained in everything from crisis intervention, suicide prevention, and (you know, because this is America, where the 2nd Amendment is the only one lotsa people know and get hard for), active shooter response, blood loss mitigation procedures, and bullet wound care.

Thankfully, mental health care is firmly on their radar, it is part of their day-in, day-out routine. I feel confident that, were I in elementary school now, I would have been promptly identified and referred for services from which I could have benefited immeasurably.

Mrs. McCabe did, after all, have plenty of opportunity to information-gather. We kinda spent a lot of quality time together. My stomach, which never seemed to act up during the weekend or over the summers, oddly seemed to lurch and pitch and roll like a stricken Cessna during school hours, most likely during, or just prior to, a math lesson.

How… queer!

I have a very strong memory of losing my shit in the school cafeteria, probably over a math homework assignment I didn’t do or some kind of numbers-related…