Puke on a Hot Radiator

I don't remember keeping my school supplies in a cigar box.  We had something called a "pencil box" that was made of plastic, but it was smaller than a cigar box.  There was enough room in it for several pencils and an eraser of two, and the top slid off to become a ruler.   I seem to remember there was a pencil sharpener at one end, but we mostly used the mechanical sharpener that was screwed to one of the windowsills in every room.

I think it was during first grade that one of the kids went to use the pencil sharpener and puked all over the hot radiator that was located along the wall beneath the windowsill.  A custodian was called in, but there wasn't much he could do because much of the puke had trickled down between the fins of the radiator and gotten bonded there by the heat.  There is nothing quite like the smell of puke on a hot radiator, and that smell lingered in our classroom for the rest of the school year.  I suppose the custodians took the radiator apart and cleaned it during summer vacation, but I don't know that for a fact because I was in a different room by then.

The halls of Gage Park High School sometimes smelled like that, well not exactly, but pretty close.  When I took chemistry in my junior year I found out that the source of that smell was butyric acid.  I don't remember using it in any of our experiments, but I understand that some of the students used to fool around with it when the chemistry teacher was out of the room.  To this day I associate the smell of puke on a hot radiator with school. Maybe that's why I didn't go to college.