“Incident worth Forgetting”

As a boy I was constantly worried about germs. I washed my hands many times a day and never liked to touch door handles of any kind, or desks, or even other students. I could not eat lunch with people who spoke strongly as I would have terrible visions of their saliva falling into my food making it totally contaminated and inedible. In addition the person from whom the saliva came made a great deal of difference to me. If it was the saliva of someone that I didn’t care for, then the food would still be contaminated by their touch or spit, if it was someone that I liked very much than I would not mind their saliva at all and perhaps even take some pride in swallowing it, but if it was someone that I disliked their bodies and all things associated with it would be utterly repulsive, and my disgust would drive me to a feverish sort of panic.
At this age, I was 6 or 7 years old, each student had to participate in a music class for which we all played the recorder – a simple wind instrument. On a very warm day I stood on line in front of my least favorite person in all of Willard Elementary School, Keith. We all stood, tooting on our recorders, waiting on line to enter the music room where we were all used to playing. I remember turning around, and seeing Keith playing his recorder and then convulsing suddenly. He unleashed what I believed was a viscous spray or the most vile glop, diseased and highly infectious. I was so disgusted that I could not realistically interpret what had happened. I believed that he had in fact blown his nose - very successfully - onto my face. He had in fact sneezed; in either case I was terribly disturbed and took many hours to recover. This is surely a memory which deserves forgetting.