A week or so ago, Happy Wife posted about a smelly situation at her new job. That got me thinking about a smelly story of my own. Let me just say that the main story is not funny at all. How I handles the situation was the funny part.
During my second year of teaching, it was just before recess and there was a faint, but bad smell in my classroom. During some student work time I wandered around the room, sniffing trying to locate the it. I found that it was coming from one of my little girls who I will call B. Now, B's mother was dying of cancer and that was all B's father could possibly deal with so B and her brother's hygiene hadn't been as good as it should have been. During recess time, I went to the health assistant to get some advice on how I should handle this. She said that it could be halitosis, or really bad breath, if brushing her teeth hadn't been a priority. So I asked around the office for some gum or mints to take back. The other kids had started commenting about the smell so I wanted to nip it in the bud as to not embarrass B. We scrounged up some peppermints and I picked up the kids to bring them back to class.
After recess, I played a game and handed out mints. I didn't want to embarrass her by just giving her one. So a few students "won" mints including B. The smell didn't completely go away, but at least everyone around B also "won" a mint, so we masked the smell as much as we could until we left for lunch.
During lunch my assistant principal found me in the staff room and laughingly told me the health assistant was ranting and raving. Apparently, one of the yard supervisors found B in the bathroom and somehow realized that she had actually had an accident and the smell was not halitosis, but rather "number 2". The health assistant was running around the office telling everyone, "The girl pooped her pants and Pumpkin Delight gave her mint!"
Oh my gosh Pumpkin! That is a VERY funny story : ). Very, very funny. What a hard thing to deal with for a child. The parent dying, not the poop : ).
ReplyDeleteThat hits so close to home I can smell it. The very reason my grandson with leukemia couldn't go to school.
ReplyDeleteUh! I have a kid who passes gas A LOT. On the bus to a field trip a parent riding with us had her turtle neck pulled up over her nose...maybe a mint would have helped!
ReplyDeleteOh, how I love this story!
ReplyDeleteI like that picture of you at the top of this post.
This story is really making me examine all of the teacher's surprise quiz games with mints as the prize.
ReplyDeleteFirst you tell me teachers don't like halloween, then they rig class quizzes.
What about all those poor kids who grew up thinking they were teacher's favourite student because they always won a mint and it turned out the teacher was just are just trying to mask bad breath (or whatever)???
I am shocked, and I feel like all of the fourth grade when I was the teacher's favourite was a total sham and my teacher really just thought I smelled and laughed about me with the school nurse and playground assistant.
Devastated.
Funny you should post that today. I had another, yes another, boy poop his pants today in class. Yep. I'd say 5th time this year someone has pooped thier pants. Many times the boy who's father dies recently. Must be something to that. No, I am not NOT letting anyone go to the bathroom. They never ask. They just quietly poop for us all to suffer through. I've never mistaken poop for bad breath though, dummy. :)
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