P.U. at SDSU – “Skunk Girl” strikes

By SOFIA BUCCILLI
Guest Columnist

Editor’s note: Columnist Scott Saalman loves promoting the work of other humor writers. Recently, he mentored college student Sofia Buccilli, a 2023 graduate of Hamilton Southeastern High School. She wrote this piece, which Scott found so funny, about an embarrassing freshman experience she encountered at San Diego State University – and, lucky for us, lived to write about it.

If you have never gotten sprayed by a skunk, I’ll let you know that it feels like the spritz of a spray bottle. It’s not a thick green gas that skunk cartoons show, but instead an extended mist of foul-smelling skunk odor.

Unfortunately, I found this out during my freshman year of college when returning to my dorm from 7-Eleven at 2 a.m. in September 2023. Why 7-Eleven so late (or early)? Things are a bit foggy now, but possibly I was there to purchase a Slurpee. Mountain Dew Major Melon, maybe … something tame like that to help me sleep.

My friend and I had been walking past some bushes when we heard the scurry of a small animal that soon appeared to us as a fat, black-and-white skunk blocking our path.

I told my friend to remain calm and quiet, but she screamed, jumped into the empty, nighttime street, and ran, leaving me behind with an equally startled skunk whose only defense mechanism was to aim its furry butt at me, raise its tail, and spray poor, innocent me – even though it was my friend’s panic that triggered the whole incident. The skunk sprayed my exposed leg, and a foul odor formed like a bubble enclosing me – think The Flaming Lips’ Zorb ball – and followed us back to the dorm.

The only place I could shower and change clothes was in my dorm. So, I had to parade my stink around hundreds of students. Apparently, the smell was worse than I imagined as the people working the front desk scrunched up their noses when the sliding glass doors opened. We entered the elevator. Enclosed in such small confines compounded my stink.

When I say it was bad, it was bad. My peers were opening their doors and coming out of their rooms in the middle of the night to see what the stench was. It wafted into every single nook and cranny of our freshman dorm building, every inch and corner. It hit every floor of the building, from the laundry room located in the basement to the door to the rooftop patio located on the fifth floor. It was so potent and strong that when I tell this story to new friends who happened to live in that same building, I am usually met with responses of “THAT WAS YOU?!?!” and “I COULD SMELL THAT FROM MY ROOM!”

The worst part was how the smell lingered. Days. Weeks. Despite air fresheners positioned strategically throughout the halls.

My shower that night consisted of someone’s kindly gifted tomato soup (that was most definitely supposed to be a yummy lunch for someone, not a body scrub for a skunk girl), dish soap, baby oil, and countless shampoo rinses. Emerging from the communal showers, I smelled like a weird concoction of soap, tomatoes, and pineapple shampoo. But anything is better than straight skunk. My poor clothes didn’t get so lucky. No matter how much detergent was used, they had to be tossed.

The one plus side was that this happened in the middle of the night. The only people who knew I was the unfortunate soul who got sprayed by a skunk were a few friends and the students emerging from their rooms, pinching their noses and exclaiming “P.U.” as my stink bubble passed by.

For the next few days, the campus chatter centered on an unidentified someone who had been sprayed by a skunk, but luckily no one knew the specifics. I was relieved knowing my identity remained a secret throughout “most” of my freshman year.

Note, I wrote, “Most.”

Just my luck, with about three weeks of school remaining, my dorm RA created an end-of-the-year bulletin board titled, “Most Memorable Things to Happen This Year.” It included blank spaces for our memories. The most common words written on the board were “skunk girl,” “that time our halls smelled like skunk,” and “the girl who got sprayed.”

People had most definitely not forgotten about the incident – or better yet, my “skunkcident.”

The legacy of Skunk Girl was on full display for everyone to see.

Such a terrible price to pay for an early-morning, 7-Eleven Slurpee.

What can I say, other than “oh well”?

Or more appropriately, “Oh smell.”