Mystery in the kitchen

A little background to today's chuckle:

As a way to build vocabulary, all over the school are vocabulary word cards on the walls that the kids pass on their way to and from class. When we line up for the library, I say, "Please line up under dissent." When we line up for the bathrooms I say, "The end of the line should not extend past stagnant." Weird sentences in and of themselves, but if you were there, you would understand.

Due to budget stuff, our school doesn't offer home economics or family consumer sciences, or whateve they call it now. It just an empty kitchen with refrigerators that are used by teachers to store our lunches (or Elsie's lunch, as it were) during the day.

Now for the funny.

At the seventh grade meeting last week, one of the teachers complained about the strong odor in the kitchen, saying that it smelled like something died. It was during a week in which my sinuses were clogged, so I couldn't smell much of anything. But when I tried really hard to breathe through my one partially working nostril, I could sense the funk in the air. The janitor found a couple of dead rats in the cabinets in the kitchen. Not lab experiments. Starved residents. Ick.

Anyway, I realized today that one of the word cards was missing off the wall on my way to lunch, but I dismissed it and didn't think of it again. Until I got to the kitchen. Someone had relocated the following word card to the door of the kitchen:

MIASMA

I laughed heartily. And am still smiling about it.

Cheers.