Smells

The new year came in with a vengeance--I had a week and a half off work, and then class and work both started up again on the fifth. I'm still trying to recover.

Anyway.

So I'm sitting in class last week (maybe the third day of class?) and all of a sudden, I'm sneezing. And I'm afraid I can't stop. During a lull, I am conscious enough to realize that I think it's the girl's perfume who is sitting beside me. Yikes. I inch to the left in my chair, hoping to escape the nostril-tingling fumes. No dice. I sneeze. My nose runs. My eyes water. Everyone else in the room is doing an EXCELLENT job of not noticing, including the professor, who is very carefully not looking at me. Or anyone, actually. Finally, I just turn my head. Ahhhhhhh, sweet relief. Eventually I inch far enough away to stop sneezing. I hope she didn't think she smelled bad...I have no idea how it actually smelled, only that it invaded my nose like an explosion of those little things you blow off dandelions in the summer. Fired into the nostrils via jet stream. That's never happened to me before. I hope it doesn't become a common occurence-- "Oh, hi, Mrs. X, it's nice to meet you!" (lean in for handshake, perfume causes nostril tingling, and Mrs. X now has snot all over her.....hmmm...this could be problematic).

So I resolve that I can't sit beside this girl anymore. Which in and of itself is problematic because she is the girlfriend of a friend of mine, and I don't want her to think I don't like her. But there are plenty of other seats, right?

Fast forward five days, same class. I get there late and have to take the remaining seat near the front. It's next to a guy I don't know. As soon as I sit down, I almost gag. My brain is going, "BODY ODOR BODY ODOR BODY ODOR BODY ODOR YOU HAVE TO MOVE. NOW, WOMAN!" I (stealthily, and without expressing the panic I feel, I hope) glance around and realize unless I want to cause a semi-major disruption, I can't change seats. So I practice the inching away technique some more and breathe through my mouth. (Seriously, people, it was the sour sweaty BO that you only get from BOTH exercising rigorously AND not showering for a few days). Then I sort of do this weird head tilt thing to aim my nostrils to my left while pretending I'm just trying to understand the professor (same one as before) better. I resolve not to sit next to this guy anymore either.

Then today, I get to class (late, again--well, late enough to not have much seat choice) and have to sit beside him again. I instinctively hold my breath. But then I (reluctantly, while breathing through my mouth) sit down and take a tentative whiff. Apparently, he has showered, though not recently, recently enough to not reek. I breathe a (small) sigh of relief and resolve to be very, very early to that class from now on.

Is there a "Supersmellers Anonymous?" Because I totally need that. This is just a small sample of what my poor poor nose goes through on a fairly regular basis. Based on this, I have decided when I get pregnant (in five or maybe ten years), I'm going to just have to hole up at home, not cook bacon, not wear perfume, not poop or have to smell it, and have something that still smells good to my pregnant, odor-revulsed selfnext to me at all times so that if I catch a whiff of something untoward, I can just smother my face with the smelly-good thing and NOT PUKE.

However, I would venture to guess that because I smell what most people don't (or smell it long before they do) I'm a supertaster and therefore food tastes better to me than most people. Which is good if you are my taste buds, but bad if you are my weight. Bad with the good, though, right?