Why You Must Accept That You Will Forevermore Be the Smelly One

The smell of boiling vinegar is burning my brain. I’m not even in the vicinity of the vinegar anymore, and yet it lingers in my nostrils like torched rubber.

I desperately hope that it is the vinegar people smell on me here at the Walmart and not the other stench. This is my silent plea as I traverse down the baking aisle grabbing all of the 2L jugs of vinegar I can find.

My dog, for the second time, has been accosted by a skunk. Maybe a more apt description would be that the dog accosted the skunk, though. She fucking hates skunks. So last night, at midnight, when little Pepe Le Pew came wandering into the open garage (where Lucy prefers to sleep), she lost her dang mind.

The spray got everywhere. I was up until 3 AM washing her with a safe hydrogen peroxide and baking soda concoction and trying to stay calm because Jamie was livid.

“Jesus, Lindsay, this dog is more trouble than she is worth!” He didn’t mean it, but I could understand his frustration.

Lucy’s skunk attack has now elevated us, as a family, into the smelly category of human beings.

And I’m not entirely sure how to remove ourselves from such a title. I’ve read that boiling vinegar helps neutralize skunk scent, hence my spending a small fortune on vinegar at this current time.

There is one constant running through my head right now — I must not be the stinky one.

. . .

It reminds me of that one time when I was seven and shit my pants at my grandparent’s house. Yes. Seven years old. I attempted to remove the fecal matter from my undies, but my efforts were for naught. There was simply too much subject matter to get rid of covertly. I wasn’t equipped with such cleaning endeavours. I didn’t know what I was doing!

I figured if I just acted casual, then maybe no one would notice.

Act cool, Lindsay. A little panty-poo never hurt anyone.

But it does hurt people. Oh, how it hurts.

“You stink,” Mom whisper-screamed at me as I sat on my grandparent’s couch. “What is happening in your pants?”

I feigned ignorance at first, saying nonchalantly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” but even my eyes were watering from my stench so eventually, I had to fess up.

I revealed that I had defecated myself, and what indeed was happening “in my pants” was not pretty.

Mom probably wouldn’t have been so angry with me if it weren’t for me constantly pooping myself. In truth, I loved shitting in my pants — or so it would seem. I always had a little turtle head poking out, and that’s because I really hate pooping in public places. Even now, as a 35 year old woman, I hate pooping in public places.

Except now, I understand the motto, “When you gotta go, you gotta go.” So I rarely poop myself anymore — this is the good news, I guess.

The sad truth is, I’ve always been the stinky one. It’s a real problem.

I think of people like my mom who carry around a fresh linen smell as if it permeates through their pores, and I wonder — how? How do you smell so unbelievably pleasant all of the time?

Not I, my friends. I’ve tried it all. Fabric softener, dryer sheets, essential oils rubbed vigorously into my stinky skin — nothing works. I can’t seem to emulate a permanently pleasing smell.

Now with this Skunk fiasco — the most difficult of stinky smells to rid oneself of — I feel like all hope is lost.

In my fervour to find all of the cleaning agents to assist me in removing the skunk smell from my home, I literally run into a woman in the Walmart. Usually when this happens (and it happens often because I am a clumsy person), I provide a genuine, “I’m so sorry,” they too say, “Oh no, I’m so sorry,” we laugh and then move on with our day.

That is not what happens today.

Today, the woman looks at me, horrified by the smell of skunky sulphur and rotten eggs, and literally jumps back to try to put as much distance between herself and me.

I want to tell her that a skunk sprayed my dog. I want to say that I don’t always smell like this. I might even admit that one day, my goal is to have people say that I’m the most pleasant-smelling person they’ve ever met.

Alas, I think back to my shit-strewn pants of yore.

Or my tendency to go days without showering because I hate my bathroom.

And then there’s my absolute inability to wash my bra with any sort of regularity.

And I realize that I will never be that sweet-smelling person of my dreams.

Today, as I search the Walmart for some sort of cleaning product that will make me smell, if not lovely, at least decent, I understand that there is a real possibility that I may always be the smelly one — roaming this world, desperate to find the sweet-smelling scent of victory, yet destined to remain, consistently, just a little bit foul.

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This post was previously published on Lindsay Rae Brown’s blog.

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