Day 627: 5 Minute Freewrite: Tuesday - Prompt: stale pepperoni pizza

Being a janitor at a university provides me all sorts of stories to tell you. I have supped full of horrors and foibles big and small, of things put in the proper place improperly, of things not put in the proper place, and of things that would be improper left at any place.

None of which I am going to tell you about. You aren't ready anyway.

I am going to tell you about my favorite thing, which is an odor that I love, at the ends of May and December every year.

It's the smell of stale pepperoni pizza, that aroma of once vibrant peppers gone flat combined with slightly rancid fats, fermenting tomato sauce, onions and garlic and one or two leftover pepperonis getting riper by the second, and damp cardboard boxes inviting mold, all throughout the campus wherever students gather.

Students and their finals, ordering all that pizza for late-night cramming sessions, to get those finals done...

That's the smell of young people who want something out of life, and are striving to get it.

That's also the smell of prosperity for ALL the pizza chains around here that I have invested in. That's the smell of me, a janitor, living like a king in retirement.

Study on, striving young people, and leave me all the pizza boxes you want. That smell is of both your success, and mine!