Headaches and Super Powers

My name is Laura, and I have a super power, so will have to come up with a super identity. How about The Nose? Or Bouquet Girl?

Yes, my super power is my sense of smell. I inherited it from my mother, who also has a strong sense of smell. Not necessarily the best super power to have when you live with pets and children, but it helps to find the source of hidden smells, if you have to do that. And if you have pets and kids, chances are you do.

The side effect to this amazing super power is that strong smells give me headaches. My mother, too, has this problem. She used to always try to give me perfumes she'd bought for herself that she couldn't wear because they gave her headaches. I tried to tell her, "Just don't wear perfume if it gives you a headache!" but Mom seems to value the favor of other people's noses over her own comfort. Most times, these perfumes give me headaches as well. So, I have lots of perfume on some glass shelves in my bathroom that mostly act as decoration. But, I have found if you keep a bottle of perfume out in the light for 10 years, the smell fades a lot, so this actually makes it wearable for those of us with super noses. My hint of the day.

This morning I was getting dressed, and quickly grabbed a sweater I bought on sale the other day at Mervyn's, a store here that is closing. Rumor has it, Kohl's department stores will be taking over the Mervyn's stores after they close. This really doesn't change my life in any way; just thought I'd share some exciting downscale department store gossip. Anyway, I pulled the tags off the sweater and pulled it on, and noticed it smelled of perfume. Apparently before I bought this sweater, someone wearing A LOT of perfume had tried it on. I hadn't bothered to try it on in the store, and apparently hadn't smelled the perfume in the store. The store had lots of other smells going on, though. Anyway, I debated taking off the smelly sweater and changing, but I'd already put on a matching necklace and earrings, and I was feeling lazy, plus was running late for Hutton's speech therapy, so left it on.

By the time I'd driven to speech therapy, I had a headache. Still, the smell wasn't as obvious, so I figured I was getting used to it, and if I still had a headache when we went home, I'd change.

After speech therapy, I took Hutton to the bus, then microwaved myself some soup to eat for lunch. My headache wasn't as bad, so I was fine to leave the smelly sweater on. That is, until I pulled up to the counter to taste my soup, and caught a whiff of something that was decidedly not soup-like. It was the smell of B.O. My mind whirled. What? Was that ME? Surely not! I showered this morning, used soap, deodorized myself....Now, not meaning to brag or anything, but I'm NOT a smelly person. I mean, if I go work out and hang out afterwards in my sweaty clothes, I'll start to smell. But I don't smell like B.O. on a normal day, and if I did, I would know! The whole super sense of smell, you know. It's not like not being able to smell your own breath. You can easily sniff your own pits and tell if you stink, right?

Which is what I did. There, under the heavy perfume smell, was the undeniable smell of B.O. Ewww! I ripped off the stinky sweater and sniffed its pits. Ewww! I rushed it to the laundry room, threw it down and Febreezed the crap out of it. I'll have to face it later, when the current load of laundry is done. I then smelled the shirt I was wearing under the sweater. It smelled vaguely perfumed and B.O.ish as well. I hurried upstairs to find a new shirt to put on. And just so you know, I sniffed my pits after taking off the stinky sweater and shirt, and they were just fine, thank you very much. Go ahead, take a sniff. See? Er, smell?

So, I've learned an important lesson, as I still nurse my smell-induced headache: When clothes shopping, sniff the clothes before you buy them. And to those of you who don't shower and/or deodorize yourself on a regular basis: you stink. Dousing yourself in perfume doesn't change that. That just makes you stink while giving those around you headaches.