Seriously?!

Yes, tomorrow is Be Kind to Smelly People Day. Seriously. I wondered how I could take this particular "celebration" and apply it to a blog posting. I'm sure we've all had days when we've been doing yard work and gotten so smelly that we can hardly stand ourselves. But, things like that aren't usually the norm for us.

I did think of two situations where the remembrance of smell can immediately evoke memories for me. The first one was when I was in 7th grade. In those days, we had to change from our street clothing into gym clothes. (The picture below looks basically like the uniforms we had. I remember the legs of the shorts portion though had elastic in it so it was kinda like wearing bloomers).
Anyway, after being outside in the Florida sunshine for about an hour, I had begun to sweat. Depending upon how long the teacher kept you, you might or might not be able to get a shower before the next class. I remember one day hurrying to get my shower. At its completion, I was still hot and rushing to get my clothes back on when I was sprayed with a cologne named "Tabu". Because my skin was still warm, it seemed as though the spray stuck to my skin and no matter how hard I tried to wash it away, it stayed with me all day. Even after all these many years, I will almost get sick whenever I have come in contact with "Tabu". I have never be able to wear it.

The other instance I can remember when I smelt so bad was after having done volunteer work right after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Joe, Corey and I had gone to Mississippi to help do whatever we could to render aid. During the few days that we were there, we stayed in a tent, didn't have access to shower, had no bathroom facilities to wash faces or any body parts and it was hot each and every day.

I remember on the day we were driving home, that we all smelled a bit "funky", but it wasn't until I walked in the back door of my own home that I realized how badly I stunk. And, it wasn't so much as a smell, but more of a reek. That is to say that I gave off or was permeated with a strong unpleasant, offensive odor. There was a stench. I remember throwing all of our clothes immediately into the washing machine and knowing that if this stench did not come out of the clothing, it would be bagged and thrown away. The smell did come out, but to this day I can recall how strong that smell was. The smell echoed what Hurricane Katrina had done to everything it had touched and the smell seemed to attach itself to anything that was in that area, including us.

I'm sure if we all think about it, we all have our own "smelly" people stories. Hopefully, they don't pertain to some smelly person we worked with (I had one of those) or someone that we had to associate from time to time and would rather not have to because of their personal odor (I've had a couple of those). All we can do as hope we won't be getting a card or a call to wish us Happy Smelly People Day!