Nonfiction

this was the nonfiction piece that I came up with... A little insight to mine and Jeri's relationship.

Hazing with Frogs

Cody and Eric sat eagerly at the lab desk, facing the entrance, waiting for their biology class to begin as well as the third member of their team to enter the classroom. In their eyes, today was one of the greatest days of the semester. It was frog dissection day. While many of the students dreaded coming to the class and being exposed to the nauseating fumes or having to touch the slimy skin of the dead amphibians, the two boys knew it was another opportunity to have fun in the class.

Mrs. Werhle, their teacher, had taken a back seat to their antics, finding that the boys managed to make the class a little more interesting. And for the day’s assignment, even she was eager to see what the boys had in store. She was especially intrigued about the plans they had for Jeri.

The week before, the teacher had showed a movie on frog dissection to help the class prepare for the hands-on activity, and the boys had used the video as part of their recruitment. Eric and Cody had discussed beforehand their rigid qualifications for the third member of their dissection group.

“I say let’s watch the video and whoever comes closest to puking is in,” said Eric mischievously.

‘That’s perfect,” agreed Cody as he already began to scan the class for likely candidates.

So while the video showed the proper technique to dissecting a frog and the rest of the class was facing the front of the classroom to watch the video, Cody and Eric were turned around scanning the faces of their classmates. They analyzed each squirm in the seat and look of disgust, carefully choosing who would fit in with their plans. As they looked in eager anticipation, they noticed one girl towards the back of the class, covering her mouth with her hands in desperation to keep from throwing up the disgustingly dry school burger she had eaten for lunch that day.

Cody and Eric turned to face each other with a triumphant look on their faces. When the movie ended, the two boys said in unison as they pointed to the girl, “Jeri’s in our group.”

Jeri’s face, if possible, turned a deeper shade of green than it already had been during the movie. “Um…no.” Jeri chocked the words out in panic.

Mrs. Wehrle looked at Jeri and gave a sympathetic smile. Jeri seemed to brighten up thinking Mrs. Wehrle was going to rescue her from the boys. “Okay, so we have our first group. Who’s next?” Jeri slumped back in the cold metal seat in defeat. She knew it was pointless to argue.

When Jeri finally decided to join the class on the day of the dissection, the boys’ faces brightened with excitement. The class was divided into two parts with one half filled with small desks for the students to use during lectures, and the other half had large raised desks with Bunsen burners built into the tops for students to use during lab assignments. Jeri took her time maneuvering through the rows of seats to the raised desks. She no doubt was hoping that the class would start and even finish without her. But to her dismay, the two boys continued to watch her with their evil grins. She sat down across from the two boys at the raised desk, doing her best to ignore the toothy smiles.

Mrs. Werhle stepped from the storage room holding a large bucket and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind what was in that bucket. Mrs. Wehrle approached each group and placed a frog on the dissection trays, and she smiled sympathetically as she saw Eric and Cody’s eager looks combined with Jeri’s panic. “Okay guys, get started.”

Jeri stepped back to let the boys begin, but it seemed that they had different plans. The boys grabbed the frog from the metal tray and took it around the classroom like a puppet and introduced it to the other group’s dead frogs. Some of the students joined in on the fun, joining frog hands to participate in the frog musical, but the majority of the class remained hard at work, despite the boys’ best efforts.

Finally, when the majority of the class had finished Cody and Eric decided that they needed to begin. Unfortunately for them, they had spent so much time with their recruiting efforts, that they hadn’t paid attention to the actual video, which showed the proper techniques to removing the various organs. As they cut into the frog, tiny pieces of frog flew into the air and landed on anyone standing in close proximity to the boys, including Jeri. As she looked in horror as the boys massacred the poor frog and her chance for an “A” on the assignment, Jeri pushed past the two boys and said, “Get out of the way.”

Cody and Eric stood back in amazement as Jeri overcame her fears and used the instruments to carefully extract the remainder of the organs that they hadn’t already destroyed. When Mrs. Wehrle came around to sign off on everyone’s organs, she laughed hysterically at the sight of the group. Each of them stood, with tiny bits of frog on their clothing and faces, next to their tray with the few organs that survived. “I’m not sure what happened to your frog, but good job anyways.”

While Eric and Cody celebrated the good grade the group received, Jeri sighed in relief at surviving the hazing from the two boys. She broke through a traumatic experience and had made two life long friends in the process not to mention that one of them would be her future husband.