Perfume Pollution 

The other day, my neighbor and I stopped at the liquor store so she could buy a bottle of vodka (if you’re a Baptist, please feel free to skip this essay). I waited in the car while she went into the store. Upon returning, as she got back into the car, the most horrendous floral odor started to prevade the car.  She told me that the lady in the store had on lots of perfume, but by now, the smell was so overpowering, she put the bottle on the back seat.  We hadn’t gone but a quarter of a mile before she had to pull over, retrieve the bottle, and put it in the trunk. We were laughing all the way home about it, amazed that something that powerful could follow us home. When we did arrive home, she had to put the bag in the trash before she went inside.  I think she washed the bottle down as well. 

And now I want to talk to you about the people who think more is better.  The ones who suffer from Anosmia. Anosmia is the inability to perceive smell. These are the people who pour on the cologne, thinking more is better until they themselves can actually smell it.  By that time, the rest of us are incapacitated.  I didn’t start out hating perfume, but thanks to technology, chemical perfumes are ubiquitous.  They’re everywhere.  Just like you have to pay people to keep chemicals out of your food, you now must pay to keep perfumes out of every imaginable product.  I don’t want to be overpowered by the fresh hint of spring in my dishwater.  I just want to do the dishes.  I don’t want soft scented tissues.  I just want to blow my nose without choking. Every day when I walk through Raymond, I can smell people’s dryers – everything thing from pine forest to bubble gum dreams!  The assault on the nose is eternal.  I have been cursed with a good sense of smell and I truly regret it.  It makes me long for the remote communities where the people hang the mail on the clothes lines for a few days before they open it.  Where there are no chemical smells or smelly plastic anything – just Nature. Now Nature is good, but not at volume 10.