(This story was found on the internet in many places. If you know the original source, please tell me and I will acknowledge it):
The setting is a third grade classroom…..
A nine-year-old boy is sitting at his desk. Suddenly and without explanation, there is a puddle between his feet and the front of his pants is wet. He thinks his heart is going to top because he cannot possibly imagine how this has happened. It’s never happened before, and he knows that when the boys find out he will never hear the end of it. He also knows that when the girls find out, they’ll never speak to him again as long as he lives.
Now the boy is sure that his heart is actually stopping. He puts his head down and says this prayer, “Dear God, this is an emergency! I need help now! Five minutes from now the entire class will be laughing at me and I won’t have a single friend left.”
As he looks up from his prayer, he is filled with horror. His teacher is walking toward his desk with a stern look on her face. He is sure that she has seen the result of his accident. Then, suddenly, a classmate named Susie hurries past the teacher, carrying the class goldfish bowl that is filled with water. Susie trips in front of the teacher and inexplicably dumps the bowl of water in the boy’s lap.
The boy pretends to be angry, but all the while is saying to himself, “Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord!”
Now, instead of being the object of ridicule, the boy is the object of sympathy. The teacher rushes him downstairs and gives him gym shorts to put on while his pants dry out. All the other children are on their hands and knees cleaning up around his desk. The sympathy is wonderful. But as life would have it, the ridicule that should have been his has now been transferred to someone else – Susie. She tries to help, but they tell her to go back to her desk. “You’ve done enough, you klutz!”
Finally, at the end of the day, as they are waiting for the bus, the boy walks over to Susie and whispers, “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” Susie whispers back, “I wet my pants once too.”