Anyway, in his normal grouchy way he made everyone shift their seats so we weren’t sitting with our friends. I ended up sitting between Bethany Barker (MG – short for mean girl) and a boy called Justin Smithers. I haven’t had a lot to do with Justin, but have heard some of the “less kind” boys call him “Dustbin” rather than Justin.
That unfortunate name goes back to last year in my English class. Our teacher was a very young and pretty lady who was always beautifully dressed with perfect make-up and hair. So obviously I called her Miss Barbie!
Miss Barbie was quite a good teacher but was rather obsessed with neatness and cleanliness. Sometimes she would stop in the middle of a lesson to straighten the pencils and books on a kid’s desk. She even had a bottle of hand sanitizer on her desk that she used every time after she touched our work books.
After lunch and playtimes she would spray an air freshener around the room. And she would always say the same thing, “We really don’t want to be smelling all those sweaty bodies and foot odors all afternoon, do we children?”
Sometimes on particularly hot days she would tip some of her perfume onto a tissue and hold it up to her nose to protect her delicate senses from her foul-smelling students. So you get the picture…Miss Barbie is one delicate princess!
In her classroom the desks are always perfectly arranged in groups of six. One day as Miss Barbie moved around the room, I saw her nose begin to twitch and then her perfect face transformed into a grimace. With a puzzled look she slowly moved around the room, stopping at each desk and sniffing gently. “Does someone need to go to the bathroom?” she asks in her delicate sweet voice. She obviously thinks one of us has let off a smelly fart. Naturally nobody responded. Everyone put their heads down and focused on their work. Miss Barbie continued to sniff around the room.
“There is a really bad smell in here somewhere,” she announced loudly with her sweet voice turning shrill as her delicate senses are assaulted by the smell. This time a few kids responded that they can smell something bad too. Miss Barbie starts a more intensive sniffing campaign, moving from one group to another.
Finally she returned to the group next to mine. In that group are 3 girls and 3 boys, one of the boys is Justin Smithers. She calls each of the kids out to the front of the class, one at a time, for a whispered conversation. I manage to just hear the words, “Are you sure you don’t need to use the bathroom,” as she talks to each of the kids. Miss Barbie does another circuit of the room before returning to the same group.
This time she starts going around the group instructing each student to open their desk. Miss Barbie has a quick look and a big sniff and then moves onto the next desk. She’s found nothing so far and there are only two kids left, Justin and another boy.
Following Miss Barbie’s instructions, Justin opens his desk wide and Miss Barbie takes a big sniff. She recoils in horror and takes two steps back. Her perfect face is pinched up into a scowl. She holds her nose as she uses a ruler to poke around in Justin’s desk. With the tips of her fingers she lifts a plastic wrapped item from the desk, it oozes and drips and a disgusting stench floods the room.
Miss Barbie runs from the room, still clutching the stinking mess in her hand and making retching noises as she leaves. Five minutes later, Mr. Sausage Nose – the principal, walks in and announces he will be taking the class as Miss Barbie has gone home sick.
After class the kids are giving Justin a bit of a hard time for causing the stink. He explains that he hadn’t finished his hot dog at lunchtime so he had hidden it in his desk, intending to eat it in class while the teacher wasn’t looking.
It could not have stunk that bad…just from lunchtime. We saw that it was starting to decompose, turning to mush!
Books for Girls - 4 Great Stories for 8 - 12 Year Olds Page 22
