Death by Scent

Monday, November 29, 2010

I don't know how many other couples argue about smell, but Terrance and I do.

I've spent the last 20 years being asked "Do you smell that?" or "Smell this? Can you smell that?" This often leads into the argument about how I don't need to smell something that he finds repellent in order to confirm his feeling about the smell. Or taste it. Because if he thinks something tastes bad, he wants me to taste it too.

I didn't see that part written into our marriage vows.

"Will you, Dawn, taste everything that Terrance asks you to, following the words "Ack. I think this is going bad, taste this! Will you also willingly stick your nose into every container or box or carton to verify his feeling about possible spoilage?"

That could have been a wedding day deal breaker, right there.

It isn't that I don't have a pretty highly attuned sense of smell myself. Ever since a particular incident when I was nine and knew there was mold on the bread because I could smell it and got talked into eating a peanut butter and jelly after my mother assured me there was NO MOLD on the bread. As I was four bites in, my mother pulled out the next slice of the loaf and it was as encrusted with mold as if it came directly out of Fleming's lab.

Vomiting commenced.

I knew I had been right, dammit. Years later, my family would tease me about my sniffing of food. I denied that I did such a thing until I was caught on video in 1990, leaning down and sniffing all the food on my plate. Um, apparently I DO sniff my food. My nostrils flare and everything.

This is all to say that I am no stranger to the quirkiness of the olfactory sense.

When I came home one day last week, I noticed a new device in the living room.

Terrance has tried and discarded nearly every home smelling product on the market. He likes incense, but I object to my house feeling and smelling like my University of Vermont dorm room circa 1988. He loved those oil and stick contraptions...until he knocked one over and it ate through the varnish on a table in less that 10 seconds.   I had visions of my child or cat running into the room with melting flesh after inadvertently touching the deadly cucumber melon scented oil/acid and made him get rid of them. I myself like candles...and he views them as fire hazards.

Since the device made no impact positive or negative on me, I paid it little mind.

Until approximately 1 a.m. that evening when I walked into the bathroom.

As I groggily reached for the light, simultaneously trying to not trip over the cat who has a desperate need to get into the bathroom with every human who enters, and ready myself to sit on the toilet, I hear the strangest noise.

HISSS.....CLICK.

What the hell? Am I about to be attacked by an angry rattlesnake?

The cat, sensing danger, bolts from the room. I am half asleep suspecting that I am about to be bitten by some rodent or other unexpected visitor who has taken up residence in my bathroom.

I stand up and search out my nemesis.

It is the Glade Sense and Spray. Terrance has positioned it so that it's motion sensor is activated by anyone entering the bathroom. He has failed to warn me.

We have now entered into some sick game of cat and mouse with the Glade Sense and Spray. I keep moving it so that I am not assaulted by a cloud of air freshener, and/or get a flood of adrenaline assuming I am about to meet my doom at the hand of some mutant city dwelling acid spitting spider every time I walk into the bathroom to, say, brush my teeth

HISSSS....CLICK!

wash my face

HISSSS...CLICK

Grab a Q Tip

HISSS...CLICK

I move it, he finds a new place in the bathroom to hide it, but cleverly so that the motion sensor will detect me and set itself off anew, all done without me Seeing it.

HISSSSSS....CLICK

Of course, once I either have a heart attack or knock myself unconscious and lose control of my bowels the good news is that the scent and spray will dutifully cover up the smells of my decomposition.

Well played, Terrance. Well played.

HISSSSSSSSSSSS.........CLICK.

2 Baleful Regards:

KBO said...

Thank God I'm not the only one whose husband insists on this smelling business. Chris is always asking me to smell his finger or some other disgusting thing. Why? I have no idea. Ugh.

Cagey (Kelli Oliver George) said...

Hahaha! Anjali smells her food before she eats - like, what? Is she a dog? Also, my Indian husband HATES incense, which I LOVE. Go figure.

I do have my candles, though. God help me, I'll probably burn the house down some day, but I STILL HAVE MY CANDLES.

 
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