#823 When you find out what was making that horrible smell and get rid of it

What a weird cover

Okay, a few years back my eleventh grade Chemistry class began with Ms. Serevetas handing out textbooks. A small woman wearing big glasses and a big labcoat, she just introduced herself and then began calling us up, one by one, to the front of the room.

It was the first day so nobody had the guts to just start talking or playing games in the back. Honestly, we just sat in mind-numbing silence while each person shuffled up, signed their name, collected their ratty old book, and shuffled back down.

It was a slow and painful ordeal until something really funny happened: one guy’s book stunk.

Honestly, it just really stunk. It was terrible. A steamy hot funk filled the room and people started giggling. Some laughed, some pointed, but Stinky-Book Guy stared straight ahead, pretending nothing was happening.

Unfortunately for him, the buzz and chatter quickly built to a point where Ms. Serevetas was forced to take action. She did so by looking up at Stinky suspiciously, and then scrunching her eyebrows with a pained grimace until he was finally forced to began fanning through the pages while everybody stared on in anticipation.

And remember: we were bored out of our minds here so this Mystery of the Funky Textbook captivated us like nothing else. The room got quiet and tense and everyone craned their necks and stared at the stink, the book, and the guy, with tingly anticipation.

Stinky-Book Guy fanned through the pages slowly at first, and then quicker, and then quicker, until a few pages slapped real fast and told us all that the mystery stench had been found.

So we watched with teeth clenched as he peeled back the page to reveal an old … rotting … piece of salami.

Don't disrespect Boyle with cured meats

Yeah, apparently someone had the good idea to drop a thin slice of cured meat between two pages on Boyle’s Law for a nice, long sit in a musty storage closet all summer. Now that once beautifully speckled slice of spice was gray and slimy and smelled like a fish market the Tuesday after a long weekend.

Anyway, at this point there was only one thing to do and Stinky-Book Guy did it: he bit his lip, nodded forcefully, and then peeled that salami off, walked over to the garbage can, and dropped it right on in.

And so — whether it’s the old can of salmon in your kitchen garbage pail, the toilet that didn’t get flushed before a long vacation, or the pool of dirty water collecting under the carpet in your basement, how does it feel to find that stinky treasure and just ditch real fast?

AWESOME!

Eat it don't keep it

Photos from: here and here

13 thoughts to “#823 When you find out what was making that horrible smell and get rid of it”

    1. Yeah, really! What a great first day of chem and what a creative student…LOL! I’d never have thought of something like that back in the day.

  1. EW!
    The first week of my chemistry class we mixed some stuff together that kind of bubbled up and was really stinky. It stunk up the entire hallway. The whole class and the teacher thought it was funny, but the principle did not. There was nothing else to the mixture… just stink. That’s all it was for.

    The stink in my house is usually a dirty diaper….. so that gets taken care of pretty quickly.

  2. I swear we’ve had a mouse dead under the fridge for at least a week now… and it’s not the first time.

      1. My dog would eat it.
        And I’m sure we’ve never seen them running across the kitchen, just we’ve a had a strange smell lingering for a few days now. The first time it was really bad. And once we found a half-decomposed mouse camouflaged on the carpet after being out for a couple days. That’s the problem with baits, you never know where the mouse will eventually cark it.

        1. Too groase! Once we had a forest rat break in, slide down inside the walls and die! It took months and a BIG box of insense to get rid of that rank smell!

          1. I remember the first time a rat got in my house when I was younger. I was about 13 or so and mom set out a bunch of traps to get it. Well.. it got it alright, but it manage to crawl in my room before it died. Scared me so bad.

  3. Fridges are the worst for this. If something is under there, the fan will blow the scent across the kitchen so you can’t quite pinpoint where it’s coming from. And if you open the fridge, you won’t find it. I went through this. However, it was awesome to finally discover and rectify the issue.

  4. I don’t think this has ever happened to me. I’ve also never found an old piece of salami in a textbook. I did once see an entire pizza lying on the stairs of one of my old schools, though. It was lying face-down, too. Everyone just kind of ignored it, the poor little pizza.

    1. Oh, if that happened in my school, the boys would be betting and daring each other to eat it. One time, a guy ate spaghetti off a dead bird for a dollar. Grossest thing I swear I ever witnessed.

  5. One time I had a pair of slippers that were stinking up my room. Mom threw them out only to fine out the smell was still there. Said it smelled like a dead rat. My mom was hunting it for weeks before finally she smelled my feet and confirmed my foot odor that got really bad xD Had to soak it in water and baking soda for a good 10 minutes, but it god rid of my horrible foot odor xD Totally awesome.

    Tip: Always wash your feet and COMPLETLY dry them.

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