I wore it just for you, honey

So this morning as I'm sitting on the bus to J-lem, minding my own business, lost in my own world of listening to tunes on the headphones and soaking up the unusually warm weather and brilliantly clear blue skies, contemplating life while the beautiful Judean Hills roll by, my entire blissful experience was shattered by the arrival of a female passenger who selfishly couldn't find time for a decent shower, yet somehow managed to swim a few laps in her very own Olympic-sized bottle of perfume. Of course she chose to sit directly in front of me, and anybody who knows me is aware of the fact that I have an unusually strong olfactory system, and as such, will understand when I say that from the moment this women got within a half mile of the bus, nothing else mattered except for the overwhelming dominance of the lingering scent which emanated from every inch of her body.

The sense of smell is one of the seven senses of the human body, all of which are quite amazing. And while at times we may take these senses for granted, we seem to become acutely aware of them when things go awry. And this morning I was reminded of all the bad that can come from the incredible blessing of being endowed with these amazing, and also critical, sensory functions.

Just as passengers tend to be bothered by groups of hoodlums playing ear-shattering music from a three-story boombox, just as we tend to be acutely aware of the annoying little twirp screaming at his mother on the cellphone, just as most of us are understandably sensitive to the shared-seat partner rubbing his/her leg against your own, and almost as intrusive as being given a front-row seat to a teenage couple's championship tongue-wrestling match, I feel that thirty minutes exposure to someone else's pungent odor, whether it be leftover gas from Thursday nights casserole or a dousing in Calvin Klein's "Turniquet of Death", is simply too much for the sensory system to process at 7:30 in the morning.

Is it too much to ask of all those leaving the privacy of their own personal dwellings for a venture into the public domain to have a little consideration and refrain from forcing the entire world to be an active participant in their daily selection of stench?

Please, for the love of G-d, let me be.

posted by Avi G @ 09:46