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I Smell Bad

I interrupt this bout of self-pity to entertain you with a story of self-depreciating humor.

I tend to get some bad body odor some days. It isn't the �pass out if you pass me in the aisle of a grocery store� variety of B.O., but it is enough that I am sure to keep a secret stick of deodorant in my desk drawer just to be sure that my body odor doesn't reach an offensive degree of scent saturation in the office. See what I did there with interspersing the names of popular deodorant into a sentence about deodorant! Nifty, eh? I couldn't figure out how to tie Dove in there, but oh well.

Anyhow, my schedule has grown more and more hectic lately with school and whatnot, and even though I have been able to keep up with most of my errands and make it to the grocery store, my attention to detail has slipped considerably. This may explain why Ryan and I are sharing a travel-sized tube of Crest for Kids and are this close to using dinner napkins as toilet paper. Anyhow, despite a couple of stops at places that sell deodorant, I have not remembered to put a new stick in the cart as of yet and subsequently, I've run out of my regular brand. Luckily, or maybe not, I had a backup stick in the closet.

I've been using this for days, and everything seemed to be going okay except near the end of each day, I would notice a smell reminiscent of Rave hairspray after a light mist of rain at a high school football game. That is a really distinct smell and especially strange to experience considering that A) I don't use hairspray and B) I am usually sitting in my office when I smell this. For days, I've been trying to figure this out. I haven't changed anything about my hair care products, but I did get a new hair cut from a new stylist. I've washed my hair many times since the cut last Wednesday, but I still wondered if somehow, the new cut was causing this hairspray like smell. I ain't so bright sometimes, huh?

Well needless to say, I finally figured out that the smell wasn't caused by my hair. That backup stick of deodorant... I don't know what brand it is called now, but I am almost 100% certain that as a sophomore in high school, I applied this very same formula and scent of deodorant to my teenaged underarms. Back in the day, we called this floral fragranced deodorant "Teen Spirit." Like I said, I haven't looked at the stick to see what brand it is today, but oh the memories.

It would seem that as the day wears on and my office grows warmer that this deodorant kicks in and starts emanating a youthful and obnoxious scent from my underarms. Fuck me. I wish I would have realized this sooner. It might have saved me some embarrassment � both the kind experienced when your co-workers think you smell funny and the kind experienced when you blame your body odor on non-existent hairspray. Grrrr - time to go to the damn store.

8:02 p.m. - February 09, 2006

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