My freshman year in college I was sick with a fever and chills. Somehow
I made it to the nurse's office in the student union building. In the
waiting room were two other students and a Nurse Ratched type lady
sitting behind a desk. I was given a four page form on a clipboard along
with a pencil. “Please return both to me when you’re through,” the devil
woman ordered. I slowly returned to my chair on the other side of the room
(probably ten feet away), and filled out the medical questionnaire and then
returned the clipboard to the nurse's desk.
A couple of minutes later, I looked down and realized that I still had the
pencil in my hand. The nurse left to check on a student in an adjoining
room, and feeling sick and too tired to get up again, I tossed the pencil in
the direction of her desk. At that moment, the nurse appeared in the doorway
and with the look of death in her eyes saw that I was throwing the pencil.
Time stood still and in what felt like life in slow motion, I, the two other students,
and satan’s nurse watched as the pencil somersaulted high in the air across the room,
and then landed perfectly inside of the pencil cup holder on her desk.
All I could do was nonchalantly shrug my shoulders. Any other time, I probably would
have gotten up and celebrated and danced around the room.
My fever was 104.