Of Popes and Puke

It's been a bit of a rollercoaster week here. First, there was this business with the Pope, which is all very happy and exciting. Then I find out Google Reader is retiring in July.  What?! I don't know what to think. I'm up, then I'm down... it's not good.

So yes. It's been an exciting few days- weeks, really- to be Catholic.  Like the rest of my good papist brethren, I signed up for popealarm.com, I scoured the news reports, and I prayed for the cardinals (maybe did a little March Madness with them, too). I waited, patiently, expecting to be in for the long haul.  And I will never forget where I was when they announced Pope Francis as the 266th Bishop of Rome. BECAUSE I WAS IN A FREAKING STANDARDIZED TESTING MEETING.  That's right. As white smoke billowed out of the world' s most famous chimney, I was reminding teachers to make sure their students fill in the bubble COMPLETELY and don't just make a CHECK MARK on it.  As Cardinal Deacon Jean-Louis Tauran announced those famous words, "habemus papam!", I was handing out testing security affidavits to be signed.  And when our new father in Rome emerged onto the balcony in his plain white robe, and raised his hand in what is already an infamous, meme-generating greeting, I was answering questions on the protocol to be followed in the event a student breaks his arm during testing.  All the while, my phone, propped up on a nearby bookshelf with its ringer turned off, lit up again and again, as voicemail after voicemail after text message poured in. 

But all good things require sacrifice, and it's only fair to mention all the wonderful things that happen while I'm at my internship. For instance, I had the great pleasure of dealing with elementary school student puke for the first time today.  I was sitting in my adviser's office when one of the 5th graders popped his head in to inform me that "M just threw up in the hallway." He was not wrong. M had, in fact, thrown up in, and directly on, the hallway.  Unfortunately, I felt I wouldn't be of service to her since I was too busy hyperventilating into a paper bag, but eventually, some logical, adult part of my brain kicked in, and I got it together enough to walk her down to the nurse's office and call the janitor for clean-up.  After it was all said and done, I kept looking around, like "Did anyone see that? I just managed to not throw up on a puking kid. Hello? WILL NO ONE GIVE ME MY DUE PROPS?"  No one did.

Why didn't the white smoke go up then?