His name is "Stinky"

I thought it was me at first.

I had just returned from the bathroom and when I entered the stall, I saw pee dripped on the seat.

I groaned to myself, "I HATE it when women hover! They always get pee on the seat!"

I think it's ironic how the REASON they hover is because they are afraid of getting someone else's pee on them BUT THEY ARE THE REASON THERE IS PEE ON THE SEAT IN THE FIRST PLACE!

anyways.....

I was standing in my classroom and about 5 students had trickled into the room, boasting about the bugs they caught over the weekend and wondering if there had been any homework and I was smiling and smelling something like pee and I was pretty sure it wasn't me.

Class was about full then, about 17 kids chattering and flitting about, digging out notebooks and pens. Some of the girls pulled out purple and turquoise pens with feathers and glitter on them. Obviously an impulse buy... probably begged their beaten down mother to buy it in the check-out line at Wal-Mart only last week when school supplies were on their clearance sale days.

Then the one-minute warning bell rang. No time to run to the bathroom to check things out.

In the next few minutes, I did all the things you do to find out if it is you who is the stinker..... I stretched around.... walked to other side of the room .... SNIFF, SNIFF, SNIFF. No, it definitely was not me.

The smell was coming from over there.

There. Right by my desk. Damn! If anyone else smelled it, (and I am sure they did), then they would think the smell was coming from me.

I made a commitment that I would try to teach the entire period from the opposite side of the room from my desk. But I knew that would be a commitment I would definitely break.

Damn! I would have to try to focus. I flicked on the switch for the room ceiling vent. I hated the noise it made and hoped it wouldn't be obvious. It purred lowly. "Not too noisy", I thought. "Perhaps no one noticed. Nice to be a science teacher and have a built-in ventilation system."

*******

This isn't the first stinker I have had. I have had many in the past. Usually the smell is B.O.

I find that a lot of parents are so used to thinking that their child is still a child, that they fail to realize that their baby has sweaty pits and needs some Arid XX. Many freshmen boys in years past have been unaware of their science and health teachers conspiring a way to break it to them nicely. You always wonder what the parents are thinking, or if they even get that close to their child to smell them.

Then there have been the kids with the hair so dirty that you swear it was made out of wax. The kids around them, nice and tolerant at first, inevitably begin making fun of them. It is social Darwinism. Can't be helped, really.

**********

About twenty minutes later, the pee smell hadn't dissipated. I had narrowed the source down to a table. It had to be coming from one of two boys. The most obvious culprit was the boy whose backpack was within three feet of my chair and beneath my smelling range.

I deduced that it was cat pee. The smell was unmistakable. A clear, acrid, ammonia scent.... strong enough to singe the hairs in my nostrils. A sharp pain pierced between my eyes.

"Are you okay, Miss?" a student noticed my painful wince.

"Hmmm? Oh, yeah. Fine." I snapped.

But inside I thought, "This may be the first recorded instance of a person who died of a migraine induced by cat pee."

I moved to the other side of the room.

*************************************

Teachers, are experts at multitasking. Like an Indian Shiva, a teacher can write on the board with one hand, erase the other side with the other hand, move a desk chair with her feet, chastise the boy on the third row from looking down a girl's blouse, write a hall pass with the other hand, throw a Band-Aid at the girl with the blistered ankle in the first row with the other hand, wince in excruciating pain and orally give the definition for a the Law of Conservation of Matter all at the same time.

Teachers may as well be gods. After 12 years of being a high school goddess, I could do all this in perfect synchrony.

While I was taking care of my micro-solar system, I was constantly thinking, "Should I approach this boy? Surely the other kids have noticed? I wonder what his home life is like? Do his parents not smell him? Their house must be a dump... cat probably peeing everywhere. Poor thing. The kids may already have a nick-name for him. Probably call him "Stinky". How do you go about telling a person they really stink? What a way to start off your high school career. He may get a terrible complex. But then again, someone should tell him...."

My thoughts trailed off.....

"And don't forget! YOU HAVE HOMEWORK!!!!!!" I snapped back into reality as the bell rang.

"Whew," as the last kid made it out the door I slumped back in my chair and took a breath.

GAG! Still cat pee!

I went across the hall to my department chair's classroom. I told him I had a stinker in class.

"Ew!" he exclaimed. "I can smell him! You've absorbed his smell!"

He was obviously not going to be any help.

I convinced a more normal co-worker to follow me back into my classroom. I needed confirmation that it was really gross. I needed someone to commiserate.

"MAN!" he projected. "That's rich!"

"What should I do?"

He had no suggestions.

So I ask you,

"What should I do?"

.