Does the Gallon of Perfume I’m Wearing Make My Ass Look Smaller?

Coming into work, today, I happened to stop at the grocery store to pick up a few supplies for the office. As I was entering the store, I got behind a woman whose perfume entered the store about 20 minutes before her, and doubtless left about three hours after we both left. Of course, she weighed by my admittedly loose estimate, around 300lbs. One can only assume that she hoped the perfume would somehow make up for that.

I was left with both the line in this post’s headline, and the line from George Carlin, where he’s talking about passing wind:

Have you ever noticed your own don’t smell so bad?

Being rather free with my thoughts on the blog, and in most other matters, it was a serious challenge to hold my tounge in my teeth as I scampered by as quickly as possible, without breathing.

The air around this woman began to take on the quality of a semi-solid, almost like Jello-O, creating a refractory effect not unlike a funhouse mirror. Thus the title of the post. I can only assume the intent was to create an optical illusion, like a Romulan Cloaking device.

What in the world causes women to do that to themselves, and to us?

Now, before you start, that’s not to suggest the phenom is just limited to women. Oh, no. We’ve each run into the occasional guy who apparently bathes in the Hai Karate container. Usually, in my experience, this is the guy that will be spotless in appearance and Felix Ungar in manner, and who wouldn’t have a clue what to do with a woman if he could ever find one that could get through the odoriferous layer surrounding him.. or wanted to.

Conclusions? I have none. Just one of those little observations of life that I have daily and occasionally want to capture and share. Perhaps the motivation for sharing this particular observation is that smell is one of the least understood of the senses, in terms of the reaction it brings. A smell, even a whiff of it, can cause serious memory restoration. No, I’m quite serious.

With me, it’s carpet glue. No, I’m not kidding. See, one of my favorite memories is a radio station I used to work at. It was a non-profit and so when it came time to put sound deadening on the walls, instead of using the expensive stuff, we got local carpet stores to donate carpet samples, which we then used carpet glue to hang them on the walls. Worked fine, but left a smell that we never did get rid of, even up to the day they took the place apart to move it. The smell of carpet glue always takes me back to those days.

What kind of memories, though, would be caused by the woman this morning, I hesitate to say. One really has to wonder what kind of logic is used in the creation of the situation I described to you. What would cause someone to lay down a layer of smell the weight of which should only be used for hand to hand combat? And what kind of political point of view would come from such a mind, I’m not even going to think about.

Now, you’ll pardon me. I have to shower.