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when Betsy passed me in the hall.
    “What is that smell?” she hooted.
    “What smell?” I replied innocently.
    She leaned forward and sniffed my neck and ears and shirt, then she paused. “I’ve got it,” she exclaimed. “It’s new-car smell!”
    “It’s just some cologne I’m wearing for show-and-tell,” I said blandly.
    “Where did you get it?”
    “The car-parts store,” I said. “New-car smell is one of my favorite smells and I can get it in a spray can.”
    “You’re nuts,” she said. “I love anchovies but I don’t rub them all over myself.”
    “Well, you should,” I snapped back. “It might help improve your social life.”
    “Your teacher is going to adore you,” Betsy mumbled acidly as she marched into the bathroom and slammed the door.
    At school Mrs. Pierre had us line up at the door. She sniffed the first girl in line. “White Shoulders,” she announced, naming the perfume. “Am I correct?”
    “Yes,” the girl replied, amazed as if her deepest secret had been revealed.
    Then Mrs. Pierre sniffed us one after another, showing off her “olfactory intelligence,” as she called it.
    “Old Spice. Shalimar. Canoe. Joy. English Leather,” she rattled off. “Chanel No. 5, good choice,” she said, patting a girl on her head. “Shows excellent French taste.” Then she smelled me. Her nose got closer and closer until the tip of it was pressed down inside my shirt collar. Finally she pulled back and said, “I give up. What is that?”
    “New-car smell,” I said proudly, and reached into my book bag and removed the spray can.
    “Well,” she said, bewildered. “That certainly is
tasteful.”
She looked over at the girls and rolled her eyes.
“Boys,”
she groaned. “Their creativity is without limits.”
    I smiled weakly. At least she thought wearing new-car smell was creative.
    Mrs. Pierre leaned forward and smelled the next kid. But then she said her nose was clogged up and she quit without naming the perfume.
    As I shuffled toward my desk, a couple guys gave me the thumbs-up, which made me feel better. But I knew the teacher thought I was still an uncivilized boy made of snakes and snails.
    After everyone had settled down, Mrs. Pierre stood on the X at the front of the class and tapped the side of her nose with one finger. “See,” she said. “The sense of smell can be trained. By the end of the year you will be able to tell, even in the dark, just who is who in this room … especially if they smell like a car.”
    Then she blew her nose with so much force it made the sound of heavy furniture being dragged across a rough floor. Carefully she unfolded the tissue and examined what she had expelled. She had a look on her face of a psychic examining tea leaves. It was as though she was reading a message about her future. It must have been good because she smiled broadly before closing the tissue and slipping it into her pocket.
    That night I pulled out my journal and had a sudden insight. I knew I was growing older because I could weigh both Mrs. Pierre’s good and bad qualities and come up with a sense of what I liked or disliked about her. When I was younger I could only pick out one thing about a person and get stuck on that. If a person was funny, I’d like them no matter if they were serial killers, and if a person had the annoying habit of chewing gum like a cow then I didn’t care for them even though they might be a saint. So even though Mrs. Pierre didn’t love my cologne, I still liked her idea about educating the senses.
           We were next assigned to bring something to represent our sense of sound. I wanted to please Mrs. Pierre. I didn’t want her to think I was a complete moron, so I gave the assignment some careful thought. We had a record with French children’s songs and so I listened to it over and over and practiced singing.
    The next day Mrs. Pierre called on me first. I knew she would because I had been so weird with my sense of smell. But I