Smell is the sense most closely associated with memory. Odor coupled with experience can prompt remembrance, distant encounters flash vividly through consciousness. Smell is the finest trigger. For this reason, I can only eat peas when they are accompanied by pearl onions. Peas alone remind me of Fatty Patty.
Patty's last name began one letter alphabetically before the first letter of mine. In the 1970s, instructors liked to seat us by letter from Adams to Zerger. As a result, Fatty Patty and yours truly were often coupled at desks designed to protect us from intercontinental ballistic missles. As far as I can tell, you crawled under your seat and assumed a position to kiss your ass goodbye. At that moment of panic, if religious kids are allowed to pray, then they should ask the good lord for vaporization. Better a quick dissolution than a slow agonizing pain.
For lack of religion it never occured to me to pray for vaporization. That's too bad. Religious kids believe in miracles; I could have used one of my own. "Dear Hercules. Please vaporize Fatty Patty. She stinks." (Or does that work better if I pray to Zeus?)
As winter broke and the days grew warmer, we were permitted to run like nuts in the playground. Since my favorite spot was any place Fatty Patty was not, I'm not sure what she did at recess; I can only convey the result. For most children, the bell tolled an invitation to boredom but it called me back into hell. When recess ended and we returned to our desks, Fatty Patty appeared with a glisten of sweat. She smelled like little green peas. Mind you, not peas and pearl onions.
A green cloud hovered over the classroom and for days on end I was sick to my stomach. What?--does she eat peas every night. No healthy human being could possibly smell like that. And so it went until finally one day I was granted reprieve. A scent transformed the atmosphere. The entire classroom smelled like a fart. At the same time it carried more pungency than simple flatuation. A rumor circulated that Robert Smith had shat himself.
But when Smith returned the following morning, his pants were different but the smell was the same. The entire classroom reeked of shit. Fatty Patty was essentially vaporized; when the pea cloud didn't exist, then neither did she. "Oh, why do you beseech me, Hercules?" Perhaps I should have called him "Herc" like the clay puppets did on Sunday morning.
One trend in education that I endured was superfluous teachers. Somebody, somewhere wrote a thesis that concluded that children learn better when they teach themselves. The result was lazy teachers. "Miss Roberts," I asked, "what is the capital of Jupitor?" Truth be told, I didn't really care about the capital of Jupitor; frankly I didn't even know it was a state. But Miss Roberts was hot and I had to practice negotiating singles bars at some point in my life. "I don't know, Jeff" she said in a sexy bimbo-at-the-bar kind of way. "Why don't you look it up?"
Miss Roberts wasn't a complete dumbass. By virtue of her job title she was more intelligent than the average fourth grader. As part of the program of self-improvement, we were occasionally summoned to look things up. This meant a trip to the back of the room, to the encyclopedia racks. I pulled "J" off the shelf. The book seemed thicker than its spine. My hand turned spine away from me so that the pages faced forward. The book was not completely closed, there was a crack in the pages. A sharp pungent odor pierced my nose and spiked me deep in my brain. I dropped volume "J" and fled the room, down the hall to the bathroom.
Robert Smith, it seems, did shit his pants one day in the fourth grade. Rather than carry that load in his britches, he stuck it in volume "J" of the Encyclopedia Americana. That act earned him the moniker which he would carry for life: "Shitty Smitty."
