Things That Smell

I don't like perfumed things. I use unscented soap, unscented deodorant, and I insist on unscented detergent to wash my clothes. After years of breaking out in rashes, I finally figured out that it was the perfume in those things that made me look like a giant strawberry, and itch like I had fleas. I am so sensitive to perfumes, that if I walk down the detergent aisle in the super market, I usually have a sneezing fit so violent that other shoppers are running away, and mothers are throwing themselves over their children to protect them.

If I had to do without the unscented products. I would probably end up like the older lady I ran across while shopping the other day. She was a stinker, she smelled horrible. The smell was so bad that I gagged out loud, and much to Mark's embarrassment, I blurted out "What smells like goat crap?". I know it wasn't just me, because two young women walked by and visibly winced and held their noses. I felt like yelling after them, "It's not me, It's that goat woman over there!!", but I kept my mouth shut for fear of inhaling more of the stench. The worst part is that she was with friends, who obviously weren't very good friends or they wouldn't have let her out of the house smelling like that.

Lately, Mark has been using a new body wash. I have asked him to stop, because he now smells like my grandmother. Not that my grandmother smelled bad. In fact she had an odor of perfume, combined with the smell of chicken soup and Lysol, none of which are really bad. It's having that smell on Mark that's so disturbing. It brings back memories of being two years old, and my grandmother holding me on her lap, pressing my face against her large bosoms. I'll never forget looking into that cleavage and seeing her lace hanky stuffed down there. For years I believed that women's breasts were meant to be used for storage. It might explain a lot of things about me.

Grandma and Alan, sometime in 1950