A woman was preparing herself some dinner when a fleck of garlic suddenly sprung up out of the hot oil simmering in the saucepan like a jumping bean cavorting on a trampoline and flew directly into her nostril.

“Help!” cried the woman. “There’s a fleck of hot garlic in my nostril!”

Actually, she was fine, but from then on, anyone who so much as sniffed the nostril into which the fleck of garlic had flown would immediately remark: “My, that smells delicious! What are you cooking in there?”

“I’m-a cookin’ the ravioli! I’m-a cookin’ the mostaccioli! I’m-a even cookin’ the stromboli!” the small Italian chef who had, in the aftermath of the incident with the garlic, taken up permanent residence inside the woman’s nostril, would reply in a charmingly stereotypical Italian accent.

Then again, perhaps the woman didn’t find his accent all that charming, because upon hearing it she would unfailingly fly into a panic. “Help!” she would scream (again), while flailing about and swatting at her own face like someone being attacked by bees. “Now there’s a small Italian chef living inside my nostril!”

The psychiatrists to whose care she was soon committed on account of this delusion, as they themselves characterized it, did their best to persuade the woman of its illusory nature on the frequent occasions on which it recurred. “There, there,” they would say above her frantic cries, patting her on the shoulder while the warden on duty prepared a straitjacket. “We can assure you based on our extensive professional training at the Olive Garden Culinary Institute of Tuscany that there is definitely not a small Italian chef living inside your nostril.”

And had it not been for the way they ran to get the parmesan cheese whenever she was about to sneeze, she might have even believed them.