Dorky Dad
| This post really stinks! |
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| Written by Dorky Dad | |
| Saturday, 29 March 2008 | |
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Sounds like me in high school. For much of my early life I eschewed the idea of bathing. I was male. Somewhere along the way I got the idea that dirt and grime were marks of manliness and I was more than willing to forgo my shower to boost my masculinity. And then I realized something: Girls stayed away from me. Come to think of it, lots of people stayed away from me. I, like many of my ancestors, stunk. But this was the 80s, and a solution was obvious: cologne. All I needed to do was douse myself in a healthy dose of cologne every morning, walk outside and wait for the girls to come running to smell my heavenly aroma. Back then, the idea was to buy an egregiously expensive bottle of intensely scented liquid and use as much as possible. All the obnoxiously dressed guys used Polo. Cool guys wore Obsession, especially if they were suckers for oddly colored avant-garde ads with heavy sexual overtones.
Sure, I had to wake up early those first few days wearing the cologne because the intense smell from my own body would make me pass out and I'd need the extra time to keep from being late for school. But I eventually developed a resistance. And yes we lost a few family pets and several of our neighbors suddenly put up “for sale” signs. But it would be worth it to finally break from my girlfriend-free existence. So I wore the cologne religiously and waited. And waited. And waited. Hey, where are the women? Apparently, I wasn't wearing enough cologne. So I tried more. And I waited. And waited. Then something dawned on me. Maybe it was my remarkable ability to find solutions to difficult problems. Maybe it was the people in school shouting at me from long distances because they couldn't come too close, lest they pass out. Maybe it was the teachers demanding I take all my classes as “independent study.” Maybe it was the bricks thrown through my window with notes saying “DON'T WEAR SO MUCH FREAKING COLOGNE YOU MORON!” But I finally figured out that women don't actually want to smell you before you show up – regardless of whether that smell is eau de toilette or eau de dirty toilet. So I learned my lesson and cut down on the cologne. Ultimately, a girl braved getting within sniffing distance, and then one or two more. But now I'm an old married guy who has his woman. I don't wear cologne anymore. In fact, my wife is lucky if I take a shower. And boy, do I feel manly!
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Various scents, including perfume, have been popular throughout history for a simple reason: the world stunk. So they lit incense and used oils to hide the stinky world. And the stinky population, at least the stinky population that had money, used perfume to hide their smell. 
I bought the Obsession because I desperately wanted to be cool. It cost me 50 bucks, which might not seem like a lot until you remember that this was the 80s. My fast-food job might have paid me $4 an hour at the time. I was lucky if my entire biweekly paycheck cleared that amount. But I was going to get me some women. That cologne was important.
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