Smelly

Now that I am writing a blog, I am reading more blogs.  It is very nice to have a business reason to do something that I find so enjoyable.

Scott Greenfield wrote on his blog, Simple Justice, about the importance of good hygiene.  He counsels:   “Hygiene matters for a great many reasons. But most of them won’t occur to you until you’re older, when you suffer for your youthful indiscretions. So someone has to tell you. Someone who is willing to say the words you need to hear but no one will risk for fear of your wrath. You smell. Deal with it.”

I taught eighth grade Language Arts for a year, and this is definitely a post that many of my students needed to read.  If I ever teach again, I would like for my students to read this post and then write a reflection on their reading.  Body odor would definitely be more interesting to them than many of the required reading materials.

But I want to add something else to Scott’s comments on body odor.  The same applies to applied body fragrances.  I attended a very crowded funeral this weekend.  The woman sitting next to me wore some perfume that was probably very popular and expensive.  But when she fanned herself as the sanctuary grew warmer, the fragrance wafted over to me and was not pleasant.  When uninvited or overwhelming, something that is expensive and called a “fragrance” can become as irritating as body odor.