Although worms seem slimy and gross, they actually don’t taste all that bad. The slimy part doesn’t bother me. I have dealt with that many times fishing in the lake behind our house in the country with my dad; taking the worm out of the little Styrofoam cup filled with dirt, working the worm around in my finger so as to get the perfect grip on it, and then finally piercing it with the hook multiple times so it wouldn’t fall off when I cast it out into the lake. What gets to me is when they start to slither around in my throat as I am trying to swallow them. Worms have these little rough spikey sections that push and pull in order for them to move in the coffee ground-like soil; they’re nothing like spaghetti. Sometimes I can feel them getting stuck halfway down on the way to my stomach as if they were holding on to my throat so they don’t fall into my belly and get eaten by my stomach acid and turn into a piece of poop.

It’s not that I have eaten worms a whole bunch of times or anything, but there are certain friends I have in school who like to show off the fact that I can eat them so easily. After all, fish eat them and we eat fish, so why not skip a step in the process? Though, on this particular day, with these particular people, my friends were trying to impress the 4th graders because it is the first day of school. Obviously, if they could associate themselves with the “Human Garbage Disposal”, they would have their chance at getting into the cool crowd. The first day of school always seems the same.

I am already a part of the ‘cool’ crowd because of my big brother. He was the real garbage disposal. I once saw him eat a grasshopper without flinching a bit. These ‘cool’ kids are the type of kids that hang out at the same table in the lunch room, trade juice boxes and candy instead of fruit or vegetables, and always seem to have something to show off to everyone who is willing to pay attention. One time Jarrod, a 4th grader who would eventually lead a mob of thousands of people onto the steps of the White House to protest Vietnam, brought a picture of his dad’s girlfriend half naked wearing only the American flag as a cape to school. He was a little too liberal about showing it to people and Mrs. Carthwright caught a glimpse of it and called his dad. That was just the beginning of his anti-authoritarian rebellion.

Every day before school I grab my blue and red backpack and meet up with my best friend and next door neighbor, Alex, and walk to school. Alex is a bit of a nerd to say the least. His parents are going through a divorce and the only way he knows how to deal with it is to immerse himself in paperback books that Mr. Henderson who works at this shoddy used book store down the street gives him in return for whatever nickels he can find in their couch. Alex wears the same thick black framed generic glasses that broke in the center over the summer. We had been playing army in his backyard and I ‘accidentally’ hit him with a rock smack dab in the center of his face. His parents were seemingly too busy to notice that we had jimmy-rigged them back together with camouflage tape, not to mention the radiating scar that shows horizontal on the top of his nose.

Alex is my partner in crime. He usually comes up with these quasi-illegal things for us to do on the weekends and after school. I don’t ever mind following along. His ideas usually come from the books he reads. He came over one day in a neurotic frenzy, glasses only halfway on his face with one of the ear pieces hanging down against his cheek. He had just read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and his idea at the time was to paint his face black and con me into helping him build a raft made of wood and twine to float down the river. He already borrowed, or rather stole, his dad’s camping hatchet and brought it over with him. He carries the axe in a way that you could tell he has never had much experience with one before and it drags occasionally on the ground hitting rocks that protrude from the ground. I will always admire his ignorance towards such things. Instead of doing what he had first suggested, we go and buy two black inner tubes from the Pump N’ Pull about a half mile down the street and tube down the river.

We were so excited to do this we didn’t even change clothes. We just blow up the inner tubes and jump right into the river. Right at the end of the tubing ride there are a bunch of medium sized rapids we have to make it through so we can get to a place we can climb up the side of the river. I make it through alright but Alex goes head over heels and comes up out of the water without his glasses off and his eyes are opened as wide as he can get them. He takes a big gasp for air. I yell at him in encouragement and he snags his tube before it can get too far away and he hops back up on it. We try to catch up to the glasses as the float down the river but they eventually sink below the surface and we loose sight of them. We make it all the way through town; people hoot and holler at us the whole way down. We walk back home along the dirt path on the side of the river and start to walk inside my house with our completely drenched bodies, feet bogged down in mud. My mother is madder than a hen in a house fire. Her eyes bulge out and her arms slam down to her sides. I can only imagine the thoughts going on her in head: laundry, mopping, and scrubbing the floor. She isn’t even mad that we tubed down the river. Unbelievable.

The same path we took home that day is the same path we take to school. If it wasn’t for getting so wet we probably would have tubed to school every day. The school is only a block and a half away from the river. In fact, the river does a staggered L-turn around the back of the school. It would be perfect to get to school if it wasn’t for the schools policies about hygiene. What do kids care about hygiene anyway? The second we show up to the big red brick building that was the school, we are bombarded with hellos and requests. The 4th graders know I will eat a worm and nobody else will. Does it always have to be me? They pick one that they feel would be the worst possible one to eat. It seems that every time they have me eat one they up the ante. First it’s a little fishing worm and next it is a radioactive mutant worm that might eat me before I eat it. I always request a condiment to go with it, usually decided by whatever we have on hand and collective screams of acceptance from the others. Freud’s group psychology was more evident than ever. Nothing was readily available so I pull out a bag of Pop Rocks I was saving to share with Alex. The kids surrounding me brighten up as the dream of having a bag of Pop Rocks for themselves.
The worm they pick out is horrendous. One of the leaders of the group of 4th graders picked it up on his family vacation in Mexico and had brought it all the way back to the states for examination. When he snatched the worm out of the Mexican dirt he definitely had me in mind. He knew exactly where this worm was going; it was going into my belly. I began to feel special in a weird sort of way, but then I can see it, in all of its glory. If anything can look Mexican, this worm does. It has a handle bar mustachio and speaks with an accent. His sombrero is absent but I believe it is because he was kidnapped from his humble casa in Guadalajara and didn’t have a chance to put it on. I wonder if when I eat him he will taste like a jalapeño and make my insides burn. I suddenly get a giant urge for a glass of milk.

The boy extends his hand to me with worm in his dirty palm. Caked in black soot from the rubber maid container he kept the worm in, I snag the worm, feeling as if I am sentencing someone to death. I wonder if the worm would do the same to me in this situation. I fiddle around with him until I have him in the tips of my fingers hanging down to the ground, dip him in the bag of Pop Rocks, lift him above my mouth and open wide. I still have half chewed cereal chunks stuck in my teeth from breakfast. I am way too full to be eating this worm right now; perhaps I should wait until lunch. ‘Might as well get it over with,’ I think. He hits my tongue and instantly starts to squirm. The Pop Rocks start to snap, crackle and pop as the little shards react to the mucus on my tongue. I can feel the microscopic spikes on his body trying to latch on and with one gulp, I swallow. Surprisingly, he doesn’t squirm as much as the worms in the states do, although I can feel him slowly graze my throat and drop into the milk and chewed cereal that fills my stomach. I wonder how long he will live while slithering around in my stomach. I wonder what part of him my stomach acid will eat first.

During the first hour of school, while we are still doing introductions in class, I throw up all of my half digested breakfast on the desk I am sitting at. Part of the puke lands in the girl’s curly blond hair in front of me. She screams a loud, chilling scream and I am frozen stiff. Her hair combined with my puke looks like a chunky yellow waterfall slowly falling off her hair in between the back of her chair and my desk. My amigo I ate not more than an hour ago is wiggling around on the desk in front of me, still full of life even though he is half devoured by my own stomach acid. I can hear him saying, “You shouldn’t have eaten me, muchacho.” I am not sure I will ever be able to eat another worm again.