An Assault on the Senses

I've written about smelly people before. It's a common violation of slugging etiquette based on my experiences. But today was special, so I'm going to take a minute to discuss it again.

I already know of several of my friends who will take GREAT offense at what I'm going to talk about, so I will apologize ahead of time. But as some background, I will say that I am a recovering smoker, so while I sit in judgment of this individual, I can understand where she's coming from. Also as some background, I suffer from SEVERE seasonal allergies, and Spring is the absolute worst time of the year for me. This particular year has been the worst I can remember, so I'm basically in a constant state of itchy snot-dom.

Moving on...

I drove this morning because I needed flexibility and the f-ing lot was full again. As is always my luck, when I'm driving there are no riders, and when I'm riding there are no drivers. I sat in the front of the line of cars for almost 15 minutes this morning. (OH, and as a side note, that skinny little pencil neck geek that goes to my destination but decided to take a car BEHIND me in the back of the line this morning because he didn't have to walk as far--making me wait EVEN LONGER--is officially blacklisted from my car FOREVER. If he walks up, I'm changing my location. Period. That guy just crossed me on the wrong morning!) Where was I?

Right, so I drove in today.

Thank goodness two riders finally came along who know the rules and got into the car. But the woman in the backseat (where my baby seat is) gets into the car still puffing on her cancer stick until the very last second. She puffs out a big lung full of smoke that basically did that little devil swirl in the air before firmly settling into the fabric of my poor little girl's seat (who just so happens to be suffering from allergies as bad as me). And of course, she didn't do a full exhale, so as she's talking and laughing at her own bad, humorless wit, she's exhaling little puffs of smoke into the air over and over again. As a recovering smoker, this both offends me and makes me want to smoke a quick cigarette again (I know, if you've never smoked, you are thinking I'm SICK). Anyway, she's sitting back there destroying one of my few precious sanctuaries from allergy torture by polluting my car with her smoke. But that's not the worst part!!!!!!!!!!

She's one of those guilty-conscience smokers who KNOWS she stinks of cigarettes but doesn't want to. So, what does she doe? That's right, you guessed it. She overcompensates for it by bathing in obnoxious perfume. Obnoxious is actually too kind a word to describe the toxic WMD she sprayed on herself this morning. In fact, now that I think about it, she did look a little suspicious....maybe I should call DHS or the FBI. I'll put that on my Outlook Tasker for later today.

I'm trying to drive in with a tissue in one hand, snot queuing at my nostrils just waiting to pour out, trying to adjust the air vents to blow her smoke and perfume away from me as I pass about 400 VA State Troopers trying to quickly compensate for their broken quotas for April. I was pretty worried that I was going to start swerving and vomiting because I was being poisoned by the Fairy Urine this woman tried to spray over her smoke-soaked work clothes. Then I started wondering if this was some sort of new terrorist weapon that could be used to kill brain cells of government workers one by one, and I started to wonder if it was best that I try to get pulled over to notify the police to prevent her from entering her office and poisoning everyone.

But then I woke up from my seasonal allergy haze and realized she was just a poor smoker who hates the fact that she can't break the habit. So she covers herself in the only perfume she can actually still smell with what's left of her nose-lining. Whatever "flower" is the base component of that perfume is, without a doubt, the worst smelling flower God ever created. If it can break through my wall of congestion enough to irritate me, it should be on Al Gore's list of banned chemicals that are bad for the environment. Come to think of it, it DID start to get a few degrees warmer while she was in my car. Maybe there is some validity to Al Gore's scientifically unfounded theory.

Nah.