Ever accidentally approach someone doing something they thought they were doing alone?  My buddy and I headed to our professor’s office to get a little help on an assignment we were struggling with.  Being that we didn’t want to wait in a line of other students, we arrived a couple minutes early. From previous times we knew that if the professor’s door was open, nobody was in there,  so we could go in.  We closed the door behind us and that’s when it hit us.
Just like when you’re enjoying a hike in the woods and all of a sudden you get that breath of  something that died two weeks ago.  For my professor’s sake, I had hoped something really did, maybe like a small mouse that got stuck in the heat register or something.  The smell wasn’t just bad, it was rank.  Our professor looked shocked to see us come in the room.  He said, “Oh hey guys, I guess it is almost office hours.” The right thing for him to do at that moment would have been to open the only small window in the room.  He didn’t.  Instead, he slowly sunk into his chair.  My friend and I exchanged glances, but pretended nothing was wrong.  The smell was strong, burned your nose, but had a sweetness to it.  We endured the stench for the entire meeting while periodically looking at the window that remained shut.  In the end, he did help us figure out our problems, but he put us through hardest help session I’ve ever been a part of.