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Another 5th grade cowtastrophe

While it's still on my mind, here's another 5th grade cow story. Pardon all the puns.

We changed seats pretty regularly in my class. One day soon after a seat change I happened to notice the back of my faded yellow chair and saw the word "cow" written medium-small with a black sharpie.

I bristled with annoyance. Why was the word "cow" on a chair? Why did I have the bad luck to be stuck with that chair? It wasn't any more broken than the other chairs, and my hair didn't catch on the screws any more than for other chairs, but still. No one wants to be stuck with a "cow" chair. I think I tried to surreptitiously switch chairs with someone else.

While I can't remember if it worked or not, I know the "cow" chair became a thing in class, and I don't think anyone particularly wanted that chair. Worst of all, though it made the rounds, someone always steered it back to me.

Every day at the end of school, we would crawl around on the floor picking up scraps of paper and other crumbs. But before we did this, we had to put our chairs up on the table so we could reach things better. When I was partially under the table, someone (maybe me) bumped the table, and a chair fell off, grazing my head.

As I blinked back tears (5th graders definitely can't ever cry, though I could have milked it for all it was worth) and my friends ran over to comfort me, one boy examined the chair. "It's the cow chair!" he said with excitement.

"Hey!" he continued. "The cow jumped over the moon!" The boys in the class began to bust up.

As I marched toward the door with my head throbbing, I almost wanted to chuck something at him. That was, quite possibly, the least funny thing I had ever heard.

On the bright side, I rarely had to sit in the cow chair after that.

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