Hiroshi's Tragedy ひろし君の悲劇

Japanese follows English.　英語の後に日本語が続きます。

Warning: this post contains content some readers may find disturbing

This is a real story.

One day when I was a second grader, the homeroom teacher rushed into the room and shouted, "Hiroshi!" Hiroshi was a popular boy for running fast and being mischievous.

Looking around and finding him surrounded by several boys and girls and talking with them, the female teacher approached him without saying a word, grabbed his neck, and took him out of the classroom. The entire classroom got quiet, staring at each other. It was the following day we learned what had happened.

Several weeks earlier, we had submitted tapes to the school. The tapes were for the test to examine the presence of threadworms. Primary schools in Japan conducted such tape tests until 2015. The test was non-invasive and easy, just having children press the adhesive side of a piece of transparent tape to the skin around the anus as soon as they woke up to identify the worms or eggs on the tape. On the morning of that day, every second grader at the school did so, submitted small envelops containing their tapes, and forgot about it.

A few weeks later (i.e., the day the teacher took Hiroshi somewhere), the hospital examining these tapes called the school to ask Hiroshi and his mother to come to the hospital. They suspected that Hiroshi had a serious disease because his tape had many pinworm eggs very unusual for humans on it. A doctor had asked him questions, such as what Hiroshi had had for dinner on the day before the test, until he confessed that, on the morning of the test he had forgotten doing it, so pressed the tape to his dog's skin around its anus... 

I moved to another school a couple of months later, so I have not seen him since then. I don’t know why but recalled this incident a few days ago when seeing a dog pooping on the street...  

警告：以下の話には、読者が不快に感じる可能性がある内容が含まれています。

小学生だった頃の実話です。

ある日、担任の先生が「ひろし君（仮名）！」と叫びながら教室に飛びこんできました。ひろし君はいたずらっ子でクラスの人気者。ひろし君を見つけた先生は彼を連れてどこかに行ってしまいました。みんなポカン？？ 何があったのか知ったのは翌日のことです。

その数週間前、ぎょう中検査があり、ひろし君のセロファンに人間だったらありえないぎょう虫が付いていたのです。驚いた病院はひろし君と母親に連絡。医師と母親に事情を聞かれたひろし君、こう白状したそうです。「検査のこと忘れてしまってたんで、犬のお尻にセロファンを当ててそれを提出しました」と。実話です。先生からクラスのみんなに絶対そんなことをしないようにというきついご指導があったことは言うまでもありません。数か月後私は転校しました。それ以来、ひろし君には会っていません｡｡｡

先日道端でしゃがみこんでいる犬を見てなぜか思い出しました｡｡｡