(December 17, 2004) — As I trudge through the doors of the girls locker room I raise my hands to my face and take a whiff of the glorious smell of metal mixed with other people’s sweat left behind by the 5-pound weights I forcedly had been lifting for the past 90 minutes in P.E. class. The sheer power of the awesomely bad odor is expressed through the painstakingly produced grimace on my saintly face. This is followed by a banshee-like scream and, “Oh my God! My hands smell as if a dog mistook me for a fire hydrant!” I run as fast as I can to the bathroom, where I attack the soap canister. Empty. I pounce onto the other one. Empty as well. My blood sugar level drops, my heart rate quickens, and a boundless river of furious anger rages through my veins. My hands are enveloped in a casing of sick miasma, and there is no soap for me to use in order to rid myself of such a revolting burden. This, my friends, is what I have been going through every other day for some time now. The flu season is upon us, and we students don’t even get a sufficient amount of soap to keep the evil bacteria at bay for a few hours. My sister got the stomach flu last week, and I had the privilege of witnessing her gradual downfall and surrender to the sickness. No, she’s still alive, but the poor kid couldn’t do anything for so many days. They say that one of the greatest defenses against disease is good hygiene, but I don’t get the privilege of living so because the occurrence of the soap canisters at this school actually having soap in them is depressingly rare.