Thumper Thinks Out Loud

No, I Do Not Care To Smell You

If I had my way, perfume and cologne would be banned. Along with smoking. It’s not so much that I wish to infringe on others’ personal choices to cover up their own body odor with alcohol-laden smelly things, or stop them from committing slow suicide; it’s just that I happen to enjoy breathing, something I cannot easily do while in the presence of someone wearing perfume, cologne, or who is smoking.

Yesterday the Spouse Thingy and I decided to go to an afternoon movie; we got there early, got the seats we wanted (heck, we were the first ones there), and the theater filled up fairly quickly. And all was well, until three people came in during the previews and sat directly in front of us. One of them was wearing perfume—and a lot of it.

I wound up watching the movie while breathing through folds of a sweatshirt. I tolerated it, but just barely.

There’s no escaping the stuff, really. Walk into a department store, and guess what’s right up there near the front door? The perfume counter, complete with testers that have been sprayed so many times the air is thick with it. And in some stores there are so many counters, and they’re so freaking long, that getting past them while holding one’s breath is damn near impossible.

And smoke… this is something I seriously miss about California. There I could go into any public place and know I’d be free from other peoples’ cigarette smoke. I’d be able to breath without the worry of suffering an instant, choking asthma attack within 2 minutes. Spouse Thingy I enjoy playing pool (badly) but we’ve yet to find a place here where we can play. The few places we’ve been into the smoke is just hanging there in the air, visibly even, and I can’t take it.

Now the mall, I like it because it’s smoke free. Not perfume free, but in a space that large I can get away from people wearing perfume easily and I can just not go into stores with large stinky displays up front. But other places loose my business—and that of lots of other people like me—because they allow smoking. And really, that’s too bad.

Face it, people can shop, and go to dinner, and play pool without smoking. I can’t do any of those things without breathing.

I just want to be able to breathe without fear, where ever I happen to be.
Is that too much to ask?