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!"
