A Stitch In Time, Saves Nine

• Meg Mccallum, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2008

Accident prone. My most obvious vice. Of all the misdemeanors, falls, trips, stumbles and crashes none chill my ego more than THE SEWING MACHINE. But for you to understand why I cringe at the thought I must take you back to day one...
Once upon a time lived a girl called Meg. Me. And my brief time in Home Economics. The trial term of home ec was split between sewing and cooking. The assignment for the 8th grade sewing class was to make a bag. A simple drawstring bag made from a bolt of cloth. Due to a shortage of sewing machines, there was a group of 3 to each machine of inconvenient hell. Or at least it was to Me. Nothing made me as unwilling to leave my bed then knowing I have 70 minutes of sheer agony at the hands or rather needle of a sewing machine. Skip forward a few weeks and while my classmates thread a rope through to make the drawstring, I was once again unpicking then re-stitching the sides to make the sides stick together. No matter how mush blood (literally), sweat and tears I put into aligning the cloth to stitch straight, it simply wouldn’t obey. In my haste to go get some much needed help from the teacher, a cord from the sewing machine went unobserved as it was wound about my ankle. Unobserved, that is, until it sent me crashing into the faded carpet. Bringing the sewing machine with it. A dead silence accentuated the 3 loudest crashes of my existence. My life flashed before my eyes as I anticipated the absolute yelling to rival anything seen on the silver screen that I was about to receive. I didn’t know what was going to happen but I know I didn’t expect a soft “are you ok?” to come from the mouth of my teacher. My nerves were shaken, my knees were weak and the blood was pounding in my ears. Falling off the art stool, walking into poles, falling over for no real reason but my lack of personal balance. All had been playful compared to that day. Although I received no physical damage, I wasn’t in trouble and the machine didn’t even break, I have never recovered from that fateful day. You can call me crazy but, far from wanting my peer’s sympathy, I’d rather the teacher hit me over the head with that stupid machine.