I'm lucky to be here.
This afternoon a child in my after-lunch class took it upon herself to violate one of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's rules, the one that decrees no student shall slather herself with lotion in the confines of the classroom on Mrs. HM's time.
The miasma of fragrance was nearly overpowering. My eyes watered. My sinuses drained. Fluid gushed down the back of my throat, jostling my uvula like a boxer at a speed bag. I hacked. I sputtered. I blew my nose. I cleared my throat. I retched like an a great-great-grandpa harrumphing up a lung. If I was a maple tree, a winter's worth of syrup could have been salvaged from my excretions.
The culprit remains at large. My suspect list is down to seven. That's because the same aroma has been known to waft about in the class before lunch. And the prime suspect has lunch at the same table as the red-handed violator. It would only stand to reason, don't you think, that birds of a feather would moisturize together? What are the odds that two completely unacquainted lasses from two completely different lunch tables would use the same lotion?
Don't think for an instant that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is oblivious to what goes on in her domain. It's just that this teaching behavior kind of gets in the way of patrolling the area for edible contraband, cell phones, bullies, sleepers, litterers, other-homework-doers, desk-drawers, shirkers, the pencil-less, book-less, shoeless, too-much-skinners, and inappropriate advertisers. I knew. I smelled. I finished the lesson while drowning in my own secretions. But by then, the illicit act was fini. Short of traversing the room and sniffing each one, I was not going to get a confession, nor a ratting. Tomorrow I will remain ever-vigilant. The perpetrator must be brought to justice.
I might need to requisition a hazmat suit.
3 comments:
It's the same thing in the elementary school. Crack in school, even when the kids are nine years old and it's unintentional.
No crack allowed in my classroom.
Just reading this made me start to wheeze, my eyes teared and now my nose is drippy. My mother-in-law used to drench herself in Jovan Musk. I could smell her the minute she exited her vehicle, before she entered the house. I would gasp for breath and cough and wheeze and would always have a splitting headache by the time she left. Must be how I came to become addicted to Sudafed.
Sioux,
Not allowed. But once it's in, it's almost impossible to remove. Especially when you're too incapacitated to conduct a proper investigation.
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Kathy,
Life isn't fair. I can't sneak in peanut butter and chow down behind my computer screen, then traipse about the room breathing on THEM. But if I'M the victim, this attempt on my life is considered acceptable, a minor incident, a "forgot the rules" lapse in judgment. It student eyes, anyway.
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