Cafeteria hijinks

When I was in high school oh so many years ago I found myself spending a lot of my spare time in the cafeteria. This was the place where you could go to play cards, plot revenge and create mayhem and mistrust. There were a great many incidents that took place and one in particular sticks in my brain at the moment.

I have always been able to make people laugh. I would like to think it is my cunning wit and sharp intellect, but it's probably because I'm funny looking. Our clique singlehandedly torpedoed milk sales for the day by placing a carton near the lineup filled with a combination of milk and dry ice. The lady seemed surprised to see us buying milk as nobody seemed to want any that day. This gives you the idea of what we were like.

And now to the main event!

It was in this vein that I embarked upon a mission of grave importance to me, a scientific experiment if you will. My research was to see how many different substances I could get to emerge from other people's nostrils. I got the usual milk and other beverages (finding out from a very annoyed friend that root beer burns the inside of one's nose upon expulsion). My crowning achievement came on the day a friend of mine decided he was having a healthy lunch.

He was sitting there eating his cottage cheese when I set him up with a crack that I forget to this very day. He laughed hysterically then froze. Suddenly he realized he could feel a piece of cottage cheese in his nose. Thus began the week of operation "how the hell do I get cottage cheese out of my sinus". We tried kleenex, various liquids and many more unorthodox techniques to no avail. We had given up hope.

Several days later, fate decided to intervene with spectacular timing. The afternoon in question was not unlike any other. We had all sat down to luch when there was a mighty sneeze from the end of the table. I saw motion out of the corner of my eye and realized at the last second that it was the cheese. Several chairs occupied by people present on the day of lodging shot back from the table in alarm while others tried to identify the mystery object. One unfortunate soul went so far as to poke it with his finger.

We took great pleasure in explaining the origins of this sinus launched projectile to him and he ran screaming to the nearest sink to wash his hands, and probably is in therapy to this day.