Such a Spate of Coincidences

I cannon believe I did not foresee my own clairvoyance.

This morning at school, standing in the hall between classes, I detected a delicious aroma. You don't smell something like this every day. It was dressing. Stuffing to some sections of the country. The stuff you have at Thanksgiving, that may or may not be cooked inside the bird. I'm sure there was an invisible cartoony meandering line of smell vapor snaking its way from under the kitchen door, across the hall, down a ways, ever climbing, right into my left nostril. The one I can breathe through. Not the perpetually clogged right one.

"Hm...," I wondered. So sagey. So bready. "Perhaps the cooks are cooking something special today. An unadvertised Christmas dinner. Just for the faculty." Nothing starts a status war a-brewin' like giving teachers something special.

"Wait a minute! There's another nuance. Turkey? Some kind of fowl. Chicken, per chance?" My thinker was working overtime. I know the menu said chicken patties. This was not your everyday cafeteria chicken patty I was snorting.

"Hold on! A new treat for the nose buds, as The Pony is wont to call his sniffer. I swear that smells like...like...blueberry muffins!" We have never had a fresh-baked blueberry muffin. Not even Martha White. If I didn't know better, I'd swear that the office candle warmer thingamajig was putting out a fragrance like Violet Beauregarde's three-course-meal gum.

One of my many conspiracy theories is that the cooks actually just toss packaged items in a giant microwave or industrial oven for warming, and in reality spend their time whipping up holiday meals for home, bountiful fare for their secret gourmet catering business, or treats for support staff after hours.

I knew the menu for today advertised chicken patty on bun, mashed potatoes, and fruit. I also saw the actual meal an hour later, on a hard plastic compartmented tray, of chicken patty on bun, mashed potatoes, green beans, and a box of Sunmaid raisins. Only the chicken patty came close to what I was smelling. I chalked it up to an olfactory hallucination.

At home, as I warmed up some food in the oven, I sliced The Pony a tiny treat to tide him over. A treat that arrived by UPS this afternoon, as usual this time of year, a gift box of tasty breads from The Daily Bread Bakery and Cafe, sent to Hick by a business associate.

I continued preparing our evening repast. Then it hit me. We were having chicken strips. Stove Top Stuffing. And The Pony had just sampled a fresh loaf of Blueberry Sour Cream Bread.

I really need to get my own reality show. Backroads Extra-Large Medium.