Bloody sneakers

Seventh grade!
Our middle school is about 4 blocks from our high school. Or at least it was.
Now they have combined our elementary, middle, and high school into one large complex.
But at this time, it was still three separate buildings each about 4 blocks apart.
It was swimming season in gym class at the middle school (5th to 8th grades) and we had to walk to the high school to use the pool.
Did I mention this was in the middle of winter with 3 to 4 feet of snow?
Anyways I love to swim. It’s the only time my body isn’t something I have to fight with just to keep up.
At this time, I didn’t know that I had medical problems with my neck, back, and hips. I just bought into what everyone else used as an excuse.
He’s lazy, he’s a lard ass, he’s just a fat, lazy, loser.
That kind of thing and no my doctor was not at all interested in my complaints.
And my friends,
Who do you think was calling me “lard ass”?
Well for whatever reason either budget, or just laziness, the athlete’s foot sprayer was empty at the pool.
So, I caught a seriously bad case of athlete’s foot.
Now I walked to school because of being harassed on the bus and the athlete’s foot got progressively worse over the next few weeks.
Until all of the skin between my toes had come off and there was nothing but muscle left between the athlete’s foot and my toe bones.
Excruciating pain and almost continues bleeding, 2 miles to school, all day going to class and climbing three stories of stairs, two miles back home up hill.
At times I had to remove my shoes and cover my feet with snow. I’d sit there alongside the road crying until my feet where numb enough to continue home.
About two months later when spring started and there were no more snow banks to cover my feet with, I was pretty much hobbling three steps at a time and resting to keep from crying out like a sissy every time I climbed the stairs.
Well, this got noticed.
Not that my homeroom teacher noticed I was in pain and leaving blood on the steps.
No, I was being lazy and purposely being late to class to cause her to have to wait for me and she would have no choice but to report me to the principal as a disruptive influence.
I don’t know if it was the tears streaming down my face, the terrible stench of my feet, or the blood leaking from my sneakers, or most likely my calling her a bitch, but she finally noticed after three months that I had something wrong with my feet.
Well, she ordered me to go to the nurse's office (two floors down and on the other side of the school) and that she would know if I didn’t go and to get moving!
Well, I told her I was trying but it was to empty air as she had gone back to the homeroom class leaving me to almost crawl to the nurse’s office.
Long story short; I was taken to the hospital. My parents were threatened with child abuse charges. I spent the next month soaking my feet in bleach and washing them off with peroxide.
A week later everything was back to my normal.
I got a new pair of sneakers out of it at least.
And brow beaten because it was my fault that nobody cared.