{A Stench So Horrid}

When I was in the sixth grade (Grade 6 if you're Canadian,) my teacher, Mrs. Lewis, had us do a science experiment. We were divided into teams, and each of us needed to bring something different to make slides of, so we could then look at them under the microscope. On the list of items to choose from, there were all kinds of things like apples, leaves, and stool samples. [Just kidding about the stool samples.] I chose to bring an onion, because it was on the list and I knew we had a 20 lb. bag of yellow onions at home.

I was so excited. (Remember: back in the ol' elementary school days, I thought my calling in life was to be a scientist. Anything science was, for me, quite a thrill.) The night before experiment day, I sat at the counter and watched as my mom made my lunch--I'm pretty sure I got a Lunchable and a Capri Sun in my brown paper bag, which was, you know, the coolest. I was jittery and giddy to boot--I even placed my offering (the onion) in my backpack that evening, ready and waiting for all the scientific fun the next day.

I threw up (vomited) three or four times that night, and when the fortuitous morning arrived, my mom forced me to stay home from school. I was too sick to go. No amount of begging or pleading would change her mind, and I tried both. I was convinced she was ruining my life. [I really hope I am not given the responsibility to raise girls when--and if--I have children. There's just so much drama involved.]

I spent a semi-miserable day home from school {I say "semi-," because really--who can be fully miserable when skipping school?} and the next day was a weekend, so there were two more days off school before I got to go back. When I finally did return, all the talk of slides and science and everything I missed made me very sad indeed, but I got over it eventually.

A month or so later, I continued to wake up and go to school, donning my sloppy, unkempt black generic-brand backpack as any good middle class student should do. I noticed, though, that something about me sort of smelled, well, odd. Thinking little of the smell, I carried on through the day and the week, but soon, I became really worried: the smell was getting worse. I showered [almost] daily, and I could tell it wasn't my self that stank. I thought that maybe my mom had gotten a different brand of laundry detergent, but some minor research disproved that theory. One day in class, I could bear the stench no longer. Sniffing all up and down my clothes, my desk and my chair, I noticed the stench becoming more pronounced as I moved closer to my backpack. Unzipping the offending knapsack, the stench grew overwhelming. I dug through my disheveled mess of homework, report cards, and long-forgotten unsigned permission slips, all the while holding my breath for fear of vomiting from the smell.

And then, I caught a glimpse of a thin orangish flake that looked suspiciously familiar. Suddenly I had a flashback--almost in slow motion--to that day, so many weeks ago, when I missed the science experiment.

"Nooooo," my mind screamed in protest, silently pleading with the Powers That Be, "say it isn't truuuuuuueeeeeee...."

How humiliating a discovery to make right there at my desk, during the middle of class time. There, at the bottom of my backpack, rotting away as it had been for the past many weeks, lay a giant black decayed...onion.

Sometimes even today, when I go without showering for a very long time, I catch a whiff of stench...a stench so horrid, it instantly transports me back to that time: the time when a stringy-haired little girl sat at her desk, trying...trying in vain...to pretend it wasn't she who smelled like rotten onion.