The Tooth Rotters

There was all sorts of fun going on at the School of Bacteria, Germs, Rot and Assorted Blights. And the most fun of all was in the Year 1 classroom.

As you can tell from the name, this was where young germs, viruses, dirt and diseases went to school. But did they go there to learn? No, not at all! The only task the little rogues had each day was to cause as much disease, filth, decay, snot and tears as possible. And Mr Mould, their teacher, would award the one who did it best a Mouldy A.

In fact, the School of Bacteria, Germs, Rot and so on wasn’t even a proper school. The greedy germs and bacteria had simply taken over a real, human school. In every classroom, they had found an old clump of dust to lurk in, somewhere nicely out of sight.

The most important thing was to make sure they kept as far away from soap and water as possible, because there was nothing the pupils at the School of Bacteria and what-have-you hated more than soap and water. So they hung out in their clump of dust in the darkest corner of each room and that was it. After all, germs and dirt don’t need desks or a whiteboard.

While the human first graders were hard at work, the filthy first graders lounged around lazily, ate, and wondered what rot they would get up to today. The littlest germs were just learning how to get started by waiting for a breeze to blow them onto someone’s unwashed hand.

“Jake took me all the way home yesterday!” boasted a little germ called Jumpy. “He’s such a lazy boy, he never washes his hands. He was about to pick his nose,…