Old Lady Perfume

<airline food>

When you get old you lose your sense of smell. Old ladies pile it on until they can smell it.

That's the sweet smell of IMMINENT DEATH.

I always just assumed it was their cunt.

Charlie. Back when I was a kid, you could load that shit up in a crop duster and the church ladies would all stand out on the blacktop and raise their arms in praise as the pilot dusted them with it.

On a positive note, though, no one ever found boll weevils on the sweet biddies.

Over 55? Does that mean I only have 11 years left to smell nice and unoffensive before I have to start wearing the stuff that smells like a field of genetically mutated roses grown in an attic? 'Cos I don't wanna.

That, my friend dynamotv, is the smell of formaldehyde mixed with regret. Savor it for it awaits in your future, too.

Just stop getting older.

Okay.

This is the same kind of question that also goes with why do all Abercrombies and 7-11's smell the same.

They are covering up the stench of death.


Seriously, I think it has much to do with the fact that they don't switch out fragrances. Our noses get used to expected smells and blotch them out.

Ever come home after a long vacation and wonder why you house smells weird?

Here's the solution, stop hovering over old women.

My mother is the best person on this planet to get perfume for. Because she loves it - she feels "unfinished" if she doesn't put on perfume after she gets ready for the day, but she's also from that generation that feels perfume is an indulgence, so she always feels guilty about buying it. Problem solved - we buy it for her. Any kind. Any brand. Any fragrance. Any price range. She will not only be thrilled to death that you got it for her, but she'll wear it, every day, till the bottle is empty, right down to the absolute last drop. Crap from the drugstore like Charlie? She'll wear it. Great, classic stuff like Chanel No. 5? She's as good as there. And I think you're right, billylove, about switching it out. She's 77, but never smells like "old lady."

A sort of cool thing happened to me in college, due to a perfume my Mom was wearing. We were doing a play called "As Is", which was written by William M. Hoffman back in the mid-80s, dealing with AIDS. I should add that I went to college in very backwards, redneck town in central PA. Plus, it was 1987, at a time when people still thought you could get AIDS by shaking hands with a gay person (particularly in that town). Our college was fairly reluctant to let us handle the subject matter, but our director (one of very few openly gay students on campus at that time) kept bugging them, and they finally gave in.

The night of the play rolls around, and we're all pretty nervous. I had my own reasons, since my character (the hospice worker) had no interaction with the other characters. I was solo, with three long monologues - one that opens the play, one in the middle of the play, and one that closes the play. And I braced my parents as much as I could about the subject matter - "Okay, Mom. It's about AIDS. Oh, and Robb and Matt kiss in one scene. And there's talk about alot of sexual acts, Mom. And I have to swear alot - my character says 'shit' three times in the middle monologue alone! I just want you to know what kind of stuff you're going to see on stage." She finally just held up her hand and went, "Okay, stop. Look, we're coming to the play, we're very proud of all of you" (my friends loved my mom, and it was mutual), "and however the rest of the audience reacts, you have us on your side."

Back to the perfume thing for a second - for Mother's Day, I had just bought her this new perfume she'd been dying for, so she had been wearing it every day since then.

So it's showtime, the lights are down, and I'm pretty scared as I step out into the spot. I can't see anyone, the audience is totally invisible, and I have no idea if my folks are there. I start my first lines into the monologue.... and all of a sudden, I smell it. I smell my Mom's perfume. Not hard to do, since we weren't doing the play in a big auditorium - we were just in a little mini-theater. I couldn't see them, but the second I caught that whiff of her perfume, I immediately calmed down. I knew they were somewhere in the audience, and the jitters just left. I thought to myself, "No matter what happens, no matter how much these bone-headed rednecks react to this play, my parents are here. I know there are at least two people in this audience who are going to support us no matter what we do on this stage."

Funny story Lisa, you should fill that out and send it into Readers Digest or something.

No. That would be old ladyish.

Well, save it for when you get old ladyish.

This is probably the correct answer...

...but this is what I thought too.

Great, touching, story, Lisa (you're also an actress? What the hell CAN'T you do?)!
Reminds me of the time my grandmother showing up to my AFJROTC promotion back in high school, 'cept she smelled of roses, Pall Malls, and Hungarian fury.