I have long thought that the very distinctive smell of my middle school cafeteria was an interesting aromatic blend unique to Smalltownsuburbia, NJ.  It was quite a special smell: a mixture of fruit snacks, lunchmeat, Hi-C, and cleaning fluid, with a teeny dash of sponge thrown in.  It lingered on even when the cafeteria was not a cafeteria, but was our gymnasium, our assembly room, or our band concert hall (‘twas an “all purpose room”, or APR for short). 

But as I was walking around NYC the other day, this oddly specific smell smacked me in the face and I immediately had thoughts of chicken nuggets and fruit punch and gym shorts (a.k.a. the classic smell-induced portrait of middle school).  I whipped around to find where this impossible smell was coming from and the only possible answer was…..from schoolchildren.  Literal schoolchildren.  This mob of 30 kids was walking down 65^th street and I randomly found myself caught in the middle of it.  That’s when I had the epiphany that eau de Lunchmeat-Hi-C-Sponge is not limited to place or time; it transcends all that.  This is a universal, everlasting smell.  I shall now make the grand hypothesis that everyone’s school cafeteria smelled like this.  So the real question is….do kids just smell like this which makes schools smell like this, or do school cafeterias smell like this which makes kids smell like this?  Ahh, the classic chicken or the egg dilemma.  This is some deep philosophical stuff. 

rant (if you can even call it that, more like random musing) by Liz (wearing her dinosaur-shaped-chicky-nuggs rantpants)