Multidimensional
Teen
Our family
had only lived in Louisiana for a couple of months
when we piled into Mama’s
Plymouth Duster and headed back to our home state
of North Carolina. It was the middle of the
school year and now I had to be the new kid on the
block once again. I had seen how classmates
treated the new kids before, and it wasn’t
pretty. Being horribly shy and a hopeless
introvert had its disadvantages for this thirteen-year-old.
In a lot
of ways the new school was my worst fear. I was targeted by a football
jock that swore I was after his girlfriend, some
of the kids made fun of the way I dressed, and because
I was shy, I was automatically labeled “stuck
up”.
I was there
less than a month when it happened. “It”,
meaning a multidimensional experience.
The day
was like any other for me, sitting quietly in
the back of the room pretending to be reading
while the other kids gathered in their cliques. My fourth-period teacher excused
me from class a couple of minutes early so I could
run a school errand. As I walked the long
empty hallways, it dawned on me that I could be
the first person in the cafeteria for submarine
sandwich day! Normally the lunch lines were
so long I often didn’t eat anything, but today
was an opportunity to have lunch with enough time
left over to run my errand.
It was
liberating to have the hallways all to myself. I picked up speed and
momentum with a single goal in mind: submarine sandwiches. My
quick pace turned into a run, and I flew faster
and faster through the corridors. Tennis shoes
screeched, classrooms became a blur. Rounding
the last corner, I easily jumped the final few steps
toward my destination. I was already airborne
when I realized the great speed I’d accumulated.Out
of nowhere a brick overhang appeared. I hadn’t
noticed it before. Bam! An explosion
of pure white light shot through my entire body,
rendering a sleeplike state over me. As the
light faded, I became aware of hanging in midair
as if I were standing on a magic carpet.
Then something
grabbed my attention. A
young lady walked through the science lab doors. She
looked directly at me-suspended high over the stairs-screamed
bloody murder, and disappeared back into the doors
she had emerged from. Her scream rang through
the science building and bled perfectly into the
lunch bell that reverberated through me.
Suddenly
I felt lighter. Enlightened. I
was still hovering in the air when I saw him-some
guy lying unconscious at the bottom of the cement
steps. Actually he looked like a rag doll,
I remember thinking. He had a serious knot
across the top of his head. As I stared at
the guy more closely, I couldn’t help but
think he looked familiar. That’s when
it hit me.
It was me!
My head
was beginning to really hurt at this point. Suddenly
I was pulled back into my body in what can only
be described as a suction of internal light.
When I
open my physical eyes everything was a blur. I could barely make out the teachers
and students as they knelt over me, the new kid,
the local freak show. I was so embarrassed,
and completely helpless to resurrect my body. One
of the teachers was pulling handfuls of hair out
of the swollen bump on my head. Ironically,
I was not bleeding. Within minutes my headache
subsided and I was fine.
The teachers
escorted me to the principles office when I lay
down and reflected on what had just happened. I’d had out-of-body
experiences like this one a lot as a kid, but never
to the same extreme. I wasn’t necessarily
afraid of the experiences, I just didn’t
understand any of it.
By the
end of sixth period I was fine and went to math
class. It wasn’t
until I was on the bus home that afternoon that
I realized I never did eat that submarine sandwich
lunch!
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