A Case of Exploding Pops

My father is a doctor and he’s always telling me about exciting and mind blowing doctor stuff. But on October 13th it was very different. It started as any regular day could. I took out my retainer in the morning, brushed my teeth, changed my clothes, and packed my backpack for school. I would come down our oak wood staircase and my mom would be in the kitchen making me two sunny side up eggs laid on two slices of sourdough. My father would be sitting in one of the three chairs in our breakfast nook reading the New York Times. “Amanda, come look at this picture” he said, I placed my plate down on the table mate parallel to his and walked over to him. There on the cover of the newspaper was a black and white photo of a lady with what looked to be big pimples crowding her face. I started reading the caption underneath the photo and it said “Jessica Lanny, a 19 year old, has been diagnosed with a new disease ‘exploding pops’”. 

As soon as my father got the message that I had read the caption he calmly said, “Please make sure you wash your body thoroughly or else this could happen and it won’t look pretty. People are saying that if you get these exploding pops green puss will explode out of your face causing irreversible damage. They’re supposed to look just like pimples so be careful”. “What!? THAT'S CRAZY!” I said, I was dumbfounded by this news, especially knowing that pimples are super common for kids my age. The next thing I knew I was at the entrance to my school, as I was walking to my locker I heard kids talking about exploding pops left, right, and center. A few hours after that it was lunch time and since I was popular I always sat with the popular girls. When I was approaching the table I could see some of them holding lip gloss tubes or cheetah print hair brushes in their hands.

 As soon as I sat down I said, “What do you guys think about that crazy new disease?” One of the girls named Erica said in an annoyed voice, “are you kidding me? That disease isn’t even real. There is no such thing as puss exploding out of your face, Amanda.” The group leader named Stacy then sarcastically said, “yeah, Amanda. I just got a pimple on my face. OMG it's about to explode on you.” She then proceeded to grab her Starbucks cup which held green matcha in it and poured it on my head! “STACY I just got this dress! How could you!” The whole cafeteria started looking at me and laughing as I tried to stand up with my now wet dress sticking to my legs.

 I went home early and changed into some new clothes. Suddenly my phone started ringing and it was Stacy, I picked it up immediately. She said in a rude voice, “Hey Amanda just so you know I just went to go rub my face all over the gross ground and nothing happened to me --” “Stacy you shouldn’t be doing that! I’m being serious, this is a groundbreaking disease and if you get exploding pops your appearance will be highly affected.” I then hung up the phone and went to bed. I woke up the next day and was off to school once again. Tons of people had already made memes of me getting matcha dumped on my head that people even hung up pictures of the incident around the school including on my locker. I ignored it as much as I could and I tried to avoid bumping into the popular girls. It came time for lunch and as soon as I walked in I saw Stacy sitting on a chair in the middle of the whole cafeteria rubbing different items on her face including somebody's shoe.

 Why was she trying to prove her point so badly I thought. Once she saw me she said, “Well looky looky, look who decided to show u--” a big green stream of puss suddenly burst out of her face and Stacy started screaming loudly. I observed as kids around the cafeteria were pulling their phones out videoing the event. “SOMEONE CALL 911” I said in a terrified voice. About thirty minutes after that the ambulance and firetruck arrived, the doctors were inspecting Stacy’s now pale face and the firefighters were giving everyone directions to go outside so they can clean up the puss filled area. Following that my father showed up and took a closer look at the holes in Stacy’s face. “Well, this looks like a case of exploding pops,” he said. 

Parents came to take their children home early and me and my dad drove to the hospital to check up on Stacy. I entered her hospital wearing a mask and gloves and managed to say “hi Stacy get better soon”, but she was sleeping. I came back the following day with my dad and got to speak with her. She apologized to me and told me that she felt miserable, I also found out that her parents were having the doctors do a skin graft for her to see if it could cover the now very visible holes in her face. Stacy didn’t return back to school because she had to go to a special school where there will be doctors around to help her if needed.

 Today is October 13th but the following year and a lot of things have changed. Exploding pops are now less common now that doctors have found a cure and kids these days have gotten smarter with their decisions even if they don’t agree with a point. My father has gone on a special trip to France to work on some patients and visit my grandparents currently, but I bet when he comes back he’ll have tons of cool information to tell me.