Waiting to Exhale

A little while ago my good friend and long-time reader of my blog(s) – he was even there during the ‘Andrew From The Blog’ days (www.millsdoescanada.blogspot.com) – asked me to write about the way these kids smell. There is no doubt that they are, on average, twice as smelly as what you find in your belly button after a couple of months of absent-minded fingering (my girlfriend once told me it smells like a miscarriage in there) but really it’s more about their ability to ignore the smellingly obvious and act as though their particular brand of olfactory obscenity is perfectly acceptable that’s of real interest.

After every class leaves another enters and almost without fail says something along the lines of, ‘Oh, Sir – can’ yu open a window?! Oo was dat you jus ‘ad in ‘ere?’ – at least I think those are the words they’re using, combined with the usual grunts and slavers. It seems that they’re only immune to their own specific class fragrance and react like a rival gang when they get wind of an unfamiliar waft – eyes narrowing and curling lips with suspicion, like a chimpanzee who’s bounced back into the enclosure from Chimp Camp only to find, upon inhaling luxuriously, that his favourite wanking rag has been covertly stolen and washed by the meddlesome zookeepers.

Before I began teaching I thought that a lot of these smells were exclusive to adults. However, it transpires that things like BO, cheesy willies and fishy fannies are just as prevalent among the young and, worse still, their as yet unrefined washing habits mean that you get a heady cocktail of these ingredients in most classes. It’s like walking into a wall of smell sometimes, especially if you’re on a cover lesson where the stench has been given some time to gather its strength before you arrive.

Summertime is without doubt the worst. As I can vouch for, being a smelly boy myself, boys are definitely the most pungent of the lot and at the all-boys school I used to teach at this rang true with a frightening adherence to stereotype. I can only assume that the little stinkers were made of asbestos or some other kind of heat-resistant fibre as during the sweltering summer months, where the blinding sun glared in through the patchy blinds all day long and the classrooms’ heat built like a foul-mouthed pressure cooker, they wore layers upon layers of clothes.

When the bell went to signal lunchtime they would peel off one tier, to reveal their running-around-like-a-mad-bastard clothes and then proceed to do exactly that for the entire duration of lunch. Upon returning, sweating like Rupert Murdoch at the point of realisation that he’d contacted the wrong person while trying to get in touch with a foolish Arthur from EastEnders (Silly Fowler – do you see?), the boys then simply reapplied the previous film of clothing and sat panting like a car window dog – adding shitty kid breath into the equation. On occasion I’m sure I’ve actually seen authentic comic book-style stink lines rising above them.

Smelly girls are, admittedly, a lot rarer, but equally offensive when encountered. Leaning in to help some girls is like being punched in the nostrils by an angry trout on the turn and they have a far greater ability to linger around in your hairy batcaves all day. As if their curdy genitals are not enough to be getting on with, they also buy the world’s cheapest perfumes and drench themselves in it before, during and after lesson, so that your classroom ends up smelling like a combination of a whore’s armpit and a strawberry Refresher. Sweet, but repulsive.

So there you have it. Ask and you will, eventually, receive. Thanks goes out to Al and Rob for being both repelled and elated by last week’s posting. I have to say, a lot of people liked the bum worms – to the extent of there being talk of a spin-off blog – ‘Bum Worms – A Modern Fairytale’. Well, if it’s disgusting you want, I have it by the anus-load. Last week at school and as a teacher next week, so expect nostalgia and blithering last-minute contrition in equal measure. Maybe see you then?