Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Bad odors

            Is there anything more offensive on the face of this planet than a bad smell? Well, if it’s coming off of a person maybe not. And trust me I have met my fair share of smelly people in my day. You may be thinking to yourself, “Man, this chapter is pointless.” Well you would be thinking correctly. The fact is, foul odors are something we have to deal with, especially if you live around the area that I have lived in all of my life. People encounter smelly objects almost every of their lives and don’t think twice about it. I just happen to put some thought into it. What can I say, smelly shit, no pun intended, offends me. I like smelling fresh and new and I like the places I am in to smell that way too. I guess that was just how I was brought up.

            First and most obvious of all, let’s talk about poop. Poop, although a hilarious word to say, can be as offensive as a Big Momma’s House 3 is to the movie industry. Why the hell are they making another one I have no idea. Hell, why did they make the first two? Anyways… Poop can come in many shapes and sizes and each has its own shock factor about it. And don’t get it twisted, no matter what, there is nothing nice about the smell of any species’ shit. Shit is shit. It comes out of something’s ass and it is called waste for a reason. Your body is literally rejecting it because it smells so bad. No one likes the smell of shit. It is offensive to everyone on the face of the earth. Well, you know, check that statement. Some people may be into it. Some sick bastard reading this will sue me because it’s his own personal fetish. To each his own I guess.

            Like I said before, living in or around the area of which I lived in most of my life it is a common occurrence to smell shit all day long. It doesn’t matter if you are in the house or outside, that smell is just tattooed in your nose. Why is that? Well besides the fact that my father goes to the bathroom 100 times a day and then thinks it’s hilarious not to spray ( I love you by the way father), we live around farms. Farms produce the foulest smells of anything I will be talking about in this chapter. Not only do they have cows, they have pigs which roll around in God only knows, and even compost on site. Cows are infamous for smelling bad. We all know this. But why do they stink up everything? Well how about for the simple fucking fact that they poop 20 times a day. Did you just read that? I don’t think you did so I will repeat it. COWS POOP 20 TIMES PER DAY! Nothing on this planet should have to shit that much. And if you don’t believe me, look that shit up. I did my research. At least you know they are regular.

            Then you have pigs which in their own right are just as or maybe even grosser than the whole cow situation. Cows may shit their brains out, but at least they have enough dignity to roll around in it. Pigs wallow around in their own fecal matter. What kind of animal is dumb enough to do this? Well I guess the pig is. That was a dumb question Greg. But that isn’t even the grossest part about these farm animals. They also eat their own shit if they are given the right conditions. No wonder those things smell so bad. Dumb dumb dumb animal… But boy do they taste good. I don’t give a damn how much they roll around or eat their own crap. Bacon tastes soooo good.

            Both of those animals obviously add to the notable stench of a farm. It’s quite obvious. But you also have to take into consideration that some farms actually use compost to farm with. This has almost a worse stench than some crap does. For those of you who have no idea what compost is, it is a mixture of decaying organic matter used to improve soil structure and provide nutrients to the soil. But what exactly is in it? Mainly dead leaves and manure. That’s right, rotting wet leaves and shit. Not only do both of these things smell terrible apart from each other, they have to be mixed together to provide one of the most natural and cheap growing materials for farmers. How would I describe the smell of compost… hmmm… well, what other things smell like rotting leaves and shit? Nothing. That’s what it smells like, and it’s awful. So why leave it sitting out where everyone can fucking smell it? I assume that most places don’t and take the proper procedures to keep the smell under control with such things like compost bins and other materials. But not around here.

           

            I also dread walking out of my house during the warmer months. Over yonder, on top of a hill oh about a mile away there is an actual rat farm. I have no idea what they test on those poor things in that plant, but they do. There is also this God awful smell that comes out of that place that I can only describe as smelling like rusty shit. Yes, that’s right, rusty shit. I like playing basketball outside so standing in that awful stench is not very fun at all. You would think you would get used to it, but you don’t. It just keeps lingering and lingering until you go back inside. Luckily it never lingers inside your house. Now that I think about it, that’s sort of odd. It’s like it waits for you to go outside so it can latch on to you. It waits to attack. Like I said, I have no idea what they do at that place, but the stench is unbearable. And it only comes out during the summer months. It doesn’t smell during the winter.

            Another thing that we have to deal with in this area is a little furry creature. A furry creature that actually feasts on garbage and sprays smelly shit out of a gland in its ass. That’s right ladies and gents, it’s the weird neighbor that no one likes because of his odor of the animal kingdom. Honestly, you find me one person who actually likes a skunk and I will buy you some groceries or something. I wouldn’t buy you anything that large because after rethinking this, I am sure you could find someone pretty easily that likes skunks. I need to think before I type. These creatures obviously use this smelly solution that they shoot out of their asses as a defense mechanism. They don’t do it as a party gag. It’s not like they are just shooting the shit around the woods and they let one slip. It’s because they are scared shitless about something and they do it to scare whatever has startled them away from that area. It has been said that it actually smells something like a mixture of eggs, garlic, and burning rubber, and to tell you the truth, I love all of those smells. And to be honest, I don’t mind the smell of skunk that much either. But then again I have never actually been sprayed by one before. So I am guessing I would be pretty pissed if I did. Especially if I would have to take a bath in tomato juice. I would literally gag. Just thinking about that makes me cringe a little.

            Being that skunks ass juice smells sort of like garlic and eggs, it made me think of other smelly foods that I despise. My family has a lot of polish in its blood. So you can imagine the things that I have had to smell and eat during my days. I am pretty sure every fucking Polish dish has some sort of smelly ass ingredient in it just to mess with my psyche. One of the main ingredients in a lot of Polish food is, in fact, one of the smelliest foods on the face of this earth is cabbage. The smell is so strong when it is being cooked that it fills the entire house with its awfulness. If that’s no fucking bad enough, if you have any sort of clothing exposed, be it folded clothes in your room, shoes, or God forbid jackets, forget about it. You are smelling like cabbage for weeks. People probably thought I lived in a damn cabbage patch. And good lord the taste is awful to. My mother is probably the best cook on the planet, and I don’t blame her, but the taste of anything with cabbage is sooooo bad. Halushki and cabbage rolls were made a lot in my house, so you can just think how I dreaded those days.

            The smell of onions is also something that I could live without for the remainder of my time left on earth. I loathe the distinctive smell of onions so much. I can’t even describe it when its being cooked. And again, this is something that was cooked a lot in my house. They smell like shit and when they cook it burns your eyes so much you want to be anywhere but there. I actually had my first experience with cutting onions not too long ago. I had to cut an onion at my one job and I seriously thought it wouldn’t bother me as much as it did. The smell, first of all, was unbearable. It smacked me in the face but I continued on like the trooper I am. Then came the eyes. I always thought people were just giant bitches fir crying when they cut an onion. If that’s the case, I must be the biggest bitch of them all because this was the worst feeling that had ever went over that part of my face. Ever. Then I made the brilliant move of rubbing my eyes, which then put me out of commission for a solid 15 minutes. I was rolling on the floor in pain, punching the wall, and sort of laughing about this wonderful life experience I just bestowed upon myself. Fuck onions. They don’t taste good and they smell terrible. By the way, along with cabbage, these will not leave your clothes for weeks either. I pity the fool who owns a wool jacket and leaves it out when one of these items is being cooked. I literally hide mine in a bomb shelter because that is the only thing that protects things from the chemical warfare of onion and cabbage smell.

            Another item on the list of the worst smelling foods is something that personally hits home to me, and it hits hard. It is a condiment. A condiment that I personally think should be taken off the shelves and never be served again. Mustard is that awful thing I am referring to. There should be a prohibition against mustard just like there was with alcohol back in the day. I can’t believe I am going to actually say this because I have a feeling it is going to come back and haunt me, but mustard is literally my worst fear in life. I am deathly afraid of a condiment. And no, don’t you DARE think I took this from the Jackass movie, because I have always been afraid of mustard. The next time someone says that to me, shits gonna go down. Yes, I am going to steal something so damn obscure from a movie, and from a character that no one even likes, just to garner some attention for myself. That was my grand scheme people. Anyways… The reasons I am afraid of mustard are few. For one, the color is absolutely putrid. Nothing that color should be ingested. It is like neon yellow people. It might as well be toxic waste you are putting on your hot dog because you actually wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Second is what it does to you. There is not one item in the food market, scratch that, the planet, that actually stains anything it touches. Except for mustard. I challenge you, slap some mustard on any substance and leave it there for a bit. Then try and clean it. Not even an industrial cleaner gets that shit out. Something that stains literally anything it touches can’t be healthy for anyone to ingest. And third, and most important, is the smell of this creepy item. Just thinking of it makes me gag a little. It honestly is the worst smell on the planet. I had a girl once find out that I was afraid of mustard and she then sprayed the length of my body in the grossness. I then vomited all over the place the street where I was and ran home. True story. By the way the clothes had to go in the garbage because MUSTARD STAINS EVERYTHING!

            I pity the people who had to walk those streets that day. Vomit smells horrifying. And trust me, I should know. As a child, I wasn’t medically diagnosed as bulimic, but I pretty much was. According to my parents, if I didn’t throw up during the day, they day wasn’t complete. This went on for years and years. I would probably say this went on till I was about seven years old. I know this because I became the normal chunky self I am today. And it is kind of weird, because I puked so much when I was a kid I think my body just doesn’t want to do it anymore. I can drink a shit ton of liquor and never puke. The only time I remember puking in the near past was when I got really sick with this 24 hour bug during the winter of 2010. I can honestly say it was the worse sickness I ever had because there was liquid coming out of both ends of me at one point. That happened so much I got dehydrated and had to go to the hospital. I think I had a record streak of years that I hadn’t puked until that day. Anyways, the reason puke is so offensive to me is because like I said I have seen and smelled a fair share of it in my day. Not only my own, but college had a lot of puke in it to. My good friend and roommate Cody didn’t know how to hold his liquor. I remember one fateful night he had drank a lot of apple flavored vodka. And being the one who took care of him I had to feel the brunt of that fact. In one fail swoop, I knew what kind of liquor he was drinking that night, what he had for dinner that night, and that he most likely broke the world record for the most time spent vomiting in one night. Thanks Cody for that wonderfully smelling mess.  And that’s what makes it so rank. Because its literally everything you have ingested during that day, which inevitably makes fowl smelling and looking vomit. Let’s face it, a lot of people eat gross shit.

            Cody was also one of those people who literally refused to take out the trash. This also adds to a bad smelling apartment. There are a lot of things that can go in the garbage that can add to that effect, especially if you are a college student. Myself, I added two of the smelliest things to ever face the garbage realm to the mix. I ate a lot of three different things during college, one of which being cereal. I love cereal, plain and simple. My day is not complete if I don’t have a bowl of it actually. I actually love cereal so much that I tried the Special K diet once. That lasted about two months and I went absolutely bonkers. For anyone who hasn’t tried or heard of the Special K diet, it is infuriating. Oh, it works people. You do lose weight. But this is why… You literally eat a bowl of cereal for two meals a day. And not just any cereal, the award winner for blandest cereal ever. So go ahead, try it. I need flavor in my life. But the cereal is not what smelled so bad, it was the milk. I am a big supporter of skim milk, no matter how much my father hates me for it. See my father is a milk man. No not like the old guys who used to come door to door, he is the guy takes it to the stores for you to buy. But he will not drink any other milk than 2%. I tried explaining to him that skim is better for you and you get the same qualities of 2%, just a little more watery… He will not have it. But I don’t think my father is worrying about his health much. I love the man more than anything, but for God sake he insists on eating two banana popsicles a night. So I don’t think a little life change like changing to skim milk is going to happen in the near future. Anyways, the milk is what the smelly item was. I had a problem with never using my milk on time while I was in college so it would always spoil. And then I would throw it away but the trash would never leave that little room because we didn’t add to it often. Sour milk is a wretched stench. One of those smells that makes your head jerk back. There aren’t many of those smells out there.

            I also ate a lot of chicken while I was in school. Not that pre maid chicken nugget crap either. No, real chicken breasts are what I bought. Nothing but the best for this guy. But after not using what I didn’t want from the package, what do you do? You throw those little slivers of chicken in the garbage. After about 2 hours, the scent of rotten flesh comes rolling through the apartment. And that’s basically what it is, something very dead, and that’s what it smells like. Hell even fresh chicken has a distinct smell to it. I guess there is just something about dead animals that smells bad. The question is, why the hell does it smell so good when you cook it? That’s what doesn’t make sense to me. How can something that smells like garbage smell so good after you put it under some heat. I also ate a lot of tuna in my day. Tuna smells like fish, obviously, and fish has a very distinct smell to it which is offensive to some. Some may not think it’s bad, like me. But after you throw it in the trash and it sits in there for a while it does. And just imagine all three of those things together. Holy Hell…

            When thinking about what I was going to write about in this chapter, I realized that a lot of these things can be categorized into one group… Old people. Here I go again bashing old people but let’s face it, old people smell. My grandma has spent a significant amount of time in a nursing home in the past few years and the stench that comes out of that place is awful. It’s a mixture of a few things actually but the two things that dominate the air quality are baby powder and shit. That’s the main smell in a nursing home and really it makes sense once you think about it. Old people use baby powder like it’s gonna go out of style. Old people for one reason or another get rashes. They just appear out of nowhere. So they use baby powder to prevent and/or heal up a rash. So that makes sense, and so does why everything smells like literal shit. That’s because the old people in that place either…

1.      Fart constantly and uncontrollably.

OR

2.      Shit themselves.

It’s just a fact of life people. We all are going to end up in their shoes. But I will tell you one thing, I am going to do everything in my power not to ever shit myself again. It doesn’t matter if I am 95 years old, I will not shit myself. I stopped that when I was a toddler. And it’s not like the smell is confined to their rooms either. These people are, for some reason, just allowed to roam the halls and mutter nonsense to people. I guess they have to have some semblance of normality in their lives still, even if they smell like feces most of the day.

            I have come down to the last two smelly items that piss me off and I found it hard to choose which one to write about last. Both of these stenches are the ones that I decided to write about last because they are the two things that, in my opinion, are the worst smelling things on the planet. Now this is hard to imagine when looking at the things before these but trust me, these suck just as bad. Body odor is probably everyone’s number one worst smelling thing. I mean just the thought of it makes people cringe. There was an item invented to stop such a foul odor from emitting from someone’s body, how more offensive can you get? Could you imagine these towns and villages hundreds or even thousands of years ago? These people didn’t have deodorant. Hell, these people didn’t even take baths. I can’t even imagine the cloud of gross surrounding those places. I would literally want to die. But what gets me is the fact that I honestly think the people who have bad BO doesn’t seem like they realize it. I have known many people who have bad odors coming off of them and they don’t do anything about it. There was a girl I went to elementary school with who was very shy. I would like to think the reason she was so shy is because her parents refused to buy her ladies speed stick. The odors coming off of this girl were offensive. Offensive to the point where we actually made a song about the odors she was omitting. I am not sure how to spell her name, and that’s probably a good thing. But she did move away and it was just good clean fun. Now that pun was intended. But I really only remember the first two lines of the song, but we had a whole damn song. I wish I could remember it… it went “ Smelly Rinelly walking down the street, the kind of girl you don’t want to meet.” I know, cruel yet pure gold.

            Cigarettes are the worst smelling thing in my opinion. Like onions and cabbage and all of those other things that I talked about, the smoke attaches itself to not only what you are wearing, but your skin as well. In fact, I can pick out a smoker from ten feet away just on smell alone. It’s quite disgusting. I think I get this opinion because of my parents. Growing up, both of my parents were smokers. Luckily my pops quit when I was 16, but my mother still smokes. So Is till have to smell it from time to time. Luckily only one of my roommates throughout college was a smoker, and he always went outside to smoke. But being that I like to have an adult beverage or two, I like going to bars. Why oh why do bars allow people to smoke inside of them? You end up leaving the bar smelling like an ash pile. It’s putrid. I go home and scrub my skin with soap and I still smell like it for a day or two. How can people deal with the fact that they will smell like that constantly? It’s unreal. And by the way, ladies… One of the least attractive things you can do is smoke. Unless you are trying to pick up another smoker, forget about it. No one wants to taste that shit.

            Why do I have such a phobia about bad smells? Well in all honesty I think everyone hates bad smells. I just talk about them because I talk about everything. Because my parents surrounded me with bad smells all of my life, I think that adds to the reason of why I am such a neat freak. Being a neat freak will eliminate a lot of those odors from your life, so I usually can stay away from them. I just wish we lived in a society where I could say “hey man, you stink” and have them not get offended by it. I am purely saying “hey man, you should probably stop cooking those onions so much or put on some deodorant. Either or, or you’re not gonna have many friends.” What so offensive about that? I’m just trying to help a brother out. I would want someone to tell me if I smelled.

            That reminds me of a story that I will leave you with. One fateful morning during my senior year of  high school, I was walking around with a stench. My late dog Sparky, who I loved and miss dearly, apparently peed on my white t shirt and I had no idea. I remember me smelling some sort of odor coming from around me but I couldn’t figure it out. I figured it out around third period because a friend of mine told me about it. One of the most embarrassing moments of my life by far. Can you imagine how many people saw that gigantic yellow stain on the back of my shirt? I bet a shit ton of people. 

coming next... chapter 8: fads