Let’s talk
about smells. Or rather, I’m going to
talk about smells and you can listen……I mean I’m going to write about smells
and you can read about them. I’m
thinking specifically of the variety and potency of smells we are surrounded
with in our daily lives. I’m not
concerned with smells that accompany sounds, although God knows I smell plenty
of those on a regular basis. No, I’m
going to write about free-range smells.
There are loads
of smells and lots of synonyms for the word smell and each synonym can evoke a
different emotion or memory. Fragrance.
That’s a synonym for smell. I
hardly ever wear a fragrance anymore but I used to – way back in college. So when I hear the word fragrance I remember
the time Dean didn’t believe me when I told him I could identify my seven
different cheap “perfumes” until I proved it to him by closing my eyes, taking seven different whiffs
and correctly naming each and every one.
One day at work a girl about three cubicles down from me caught a whiff of burning
rubber. I was so busy earning your tax
dollars I didn’t catch that whiff myself, or know it was coming from the strip
my desk heater was plugged into, until I saw her with her nose down under my
counter, sniffing.
Some smells
are so faint you have to purposely put your nose close and sniff. A sniff can bring out the subtle perfume of a
bunch of flowers or the rich bouquet of a great big glass of red wine at the
end of a long day. Or a short day. Or any day.
Or all days actually.
But some
smells are just stinks. Here’s the
thing. Today, as I was working, I began
to catch a whiff of something unpleasant but I couldn’t quite put my finger on
it. Pretty soon my head began to hurt. And then I began to feel a little queasy. I
really wanted to open a window but none of the windows in our office open so I
was forced to continue to inhale this smell which got sweeter and stronger
by the moment. It smelled like somebody
had taken a hunk of warm, pink cotton candy, a bag of Brach’s butterscotch
candies and just a touch of coconut flakes, thrown them in a saucepan, melted
them together, stirred until it was nice and warm and sticky, formed the gooey mess into a wad, stuck
it into their mouth, stood right in front of me and chewed with their mouth
open, breathing right into my face.
I suppose whoever
let loose the stench from what I can only assume was a flameless candle or fragrance sphere, felt it
soothed them and made it easier to survive eight hours sitting in an ugly
windowless cubicle. It did not soothe
me. I wonder if they felt as pleasantly
lulled after they caught a whiff of the scent wafting out of my cubicle after I
vomited in my wastebasket.
Don't worry. I refrained. Barely.
1 comment:
That made me feel nauseous just by reading it...
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