Just like a snatch of music can take us back to a specific time and place, so can a smell. Usually, though, music will transport you to somewhere you like. A smell, however, is quite another matter. While grandma's cookies will send chemicals happily racing across the synapses towards a pleasure receptor, there are more than an equal number of stink-pain places in each cranium. What follows are my bottom five all-time smell-o-rama experiences. I believe that in order for one to be truly culturally literate he or she must be able to immediately identify these odors, like a "I-can-name-that-smell-in-three-notes" type deal.
1. Nursing Home Nausea. How many time have we said it? "Man, before I go into a nursing home, just shoot me". I suggest that the main reason for this fear and loathing is not so much the loss of freedom, the screeching of the inmates, the oatmeal with mop strings, or incipient senile dementia. No, sir, the main reason is the stink. And oh, boy, what a stink it is! Like a fine wine, one can describe the aroma thus:
"It has a heady bouquet, with a surface taint suggesting an interesting combination of floor wax, well-seasoned urinal biscuits, and Lysol. Just underneath and waiting to attack is the less than subtle "pile of used Depends" odor interlaced with week old split-pea vomit. Permeating all is an array of Old Person Funk and toejam". Indeed, just shoot me.....
2. House Disgusting. At least once in our lives, through some unfortunate circumstance or another, we find ourselves in a house that rabid zoo monkeys would run screaming from. In any neighborhood, just out of sight, are houses that require one to don an Environmental Protection Agency suit of the type that repels the Ebola virus, and maybe even that ain't enough. Lordy, what are these people thinking? Through delivering food basket to the poor at Christmas (OK, so I only did it twice) and my work interviewing people in the law enforcement arena I have been blessed with many opportunities to see just how low people can sink, or rather, stink. The mother of all these experiences was about four years ago delivering food baskets. Me and Ms. LAC, Miami Dolphin fan supreme, were in a crappy part of town (where else would they need the food?) and stopped at a sinister-looking house. I carried a heavy box up the walk and stopped dead about twenty paces from the front door. Even from that distance my gag-reflex was telling my breakfast to vamoose, fast. There was something alive in that place, and I don't mean the people. As I crept slowly towards the front door I swear I could see the cartoon stink-lines vibrating out. The smell became a living presence, seemingly pushing me away. Walking towards the house was like trying to make it down the sidewalk against a hurricane-force wind. By the time I reached the front door my eyes were tearing up and whatever was in my stomach was spinning around like dead fish in a blender. Ms. LAC wisely maintained a safe distance in case paramedics needed to be summoned.
I tapped lightly on the front door, and prepared to throw down the food box and run for it. The door screeeeed open and a pasty-white face peeped around it. Once that door opened the full force of the stink-blast punched me in the gut like Mike Tyson. I realized just how horrible an Egg McMuffin tasted the second time around. I could not speak. Looking inside I saw about eight cats running around, hopping over at least 85 piles of kitty turds. These poop-islands were surrounded by rivers and lakes of cat pee, creating it's own ecosystem. In the middle of this were two kids, smeared with cat shit, happily making Crap Cakes. Used diapers were everywhere, amid food scrapings, roaches, and piles of I-don't-want-to-know-what. I flung the box down, and said something like "Mmmmm..ff...mmmmmm...mmmfff" and hoofed it. Ms. LAC called a police buddy. We read the report he wrote later, wherein he said that his uniform was no longer fit to wear after being in that house.
{Man, someone open a window.....}
3. Man's best stinking friend. Everyone's got at least one friend or acquaintance who has a dog and doesn't give a shit, pardon the pun. Fido has the run of the house, and flings mass amounts of doggy hair, doggy spit, doggy shit, and other doggy bodily exudates over every square inch, including couches, eating surfaces, beds.....just everywhere. The unique aroma of wet dog parts ground into fabric over years cannot be removed by any means except arson. You sit down and try to ignore the funk, wondering how your hosts can live in this place. Not to worry, they have become so acclimated to it they probably keep a sample in their car so as to feel at home when on an extended trip. A variation on this theme is the home of one of my cousins, who just had to have a pot-belly pig. Or, at least she thought it was a pot-belly pig when she got it. Instead of growing to 40 pounds or so, this thing now weighs over 300 pounds. And, it's so darn cute and domesticated it's allowed in the house. Now, I don't want to be gross, but have you ever smelled a pig fart? She thought they were "cute" too. There is no smell on earth like a pig fart in an enclosed space, and I can testify to this in a court of law.
4. Kim Chee Stinkee. I don't know how they make this stuff, but I've heard you take ordinary cabbage, put it in a jar under Funk and Wagnall's doorstep, and let it get good and rotten. I do not mean to sound racist, but I have only experienced the worst examples of the dreaded Kim Chee Breath at small, Korean grocery stores. Perhaps my ethnocentrism and lack of cultural diversity awareness is getting in the way. Perhaps those same Koreans would find the smell of my mother's Bratwurst just as offensive. Nonetheless, this blond German finds jet-propelled Kim Chee Breath astonishing in it's power to bring one to one's knees.
And the winner is.....
5. The men's room at any Fred Meyer store. Now, we all know that any public bathroom is a priori bad news. Service stations, outhouses at the campground, planes and trains, bus stations, are all knee-droppin' funk-o-rama -villes.
Fred Meyer is a huge chain of supermarket/clothing/variety outlets. Somehow Fred Meyer's has standardized not only the floor plans but also the bathroom odor. It's unique, and the same in each store. [Small digression: Why do men use public toilets to take loud, flatulent, never-ending dumps? Why do they insist on accompanying public pooping with a kazoo symphony of noises from every orifice? Like happy couples cramming their tongues down each other's throats in public, why don't these people do this at home? For cryin' out loud, they're just going to the store - can't they wait? Are they doing this in public restrooms to spare their families?]
One imagines a Fred Meyer delivery truck arriving each week with replacement stink-bags to hang over each toilet. There's no way such a foul odor could be produced by the human body, even Jerry Springer's. My personal theory is that management is trying to save money on bathroom supplies, and smells up the place to drive people away. Or maybe the security people get bored and cackle at gagging customers through one-way mirrors. Whatever. If you have a personal fave that can beat this, Email me and I will happily share it......This has inspired me to create an invention that will make me a zillion dollars. You know those Glade plug-in things that make a room smell like Imitation Pine-like scent? For guests who stay too long; for bosses and other office pains that invade your work space; for simple revenge, I propose to manufacture Stinky Plug-Ins, with all of the above odors combined. Want to bet it'll sell?