Perfume War

Today is a good day because I am not on the front line in the war to end all wars, the perfume war. Now I can just hear you guys saying to yourself, what is the perfume war?  Excuse me just a minute while I do a little war dance. I've got to prepare myself for the gruesome details of this hideous conflict I'm about to share.

Okay, this all started when I was still a girl at home. I would take my babysitting money to the mall, and look in all the stores until I could find a bottle of perfume that I could afford. I thought my wages, 50 cents an hour was pretty good at the time, and after an evening of babysitting I would bring home the bacon, or $2 to $3 was more like it. 

So finding perfume in my price range was a little bit of a challenge, but I hit pay dirt when I found Emeraude on sale. I was elated when I got some Chantilly and the best bargain of all was Jovan's Musk.

I loved my perfume and it loved me. I loved it so much that one spray to my wrist wasn't enough. I had to have more, so I would spray it on my throat, my shoulders and the back of my neck, and I could smell it all day, and evidently so could my dad.  Before I could even get out of the bathroom he'd be yelling "Who's spraying the perfume?" and when I would emerge he would grab it out of my hand, and look at me with that disgusting scowl that P U makes, and say "It's giving me a headache!" 

I mean when was the last time you smelled something really stinky? Did your nose wrinkle up, and your lips get locked in that upper lip curl thing? I know everyone can picture it now, I'll even bet some of you are putting your fingers on your nose, and pinching your nostrils closed just thinking of that trash can you just put the trash bag in, or the mommies that have just gotten a whiff of that dark green baby poop, or smelling the significant others flatulations under the sheets last night. I mean Whew! I don't care who you are, that stuff is stinky!

But my perfume? It shouldn't even get one point on the stink to high heaven scale.

How traumatic for me to have my own flesh and blood, my daddy, look at me with disgust and say that I "smelled" and confiscate my hard earned bottle of perfume. And if that wasn't punishment enough, I was forbidden to spray perfume in the house, ever. I have to admit that my feelings were hurt, more than a little.

While I learned never to spray perfume in my parents house, it didn't stop me from spraying it on the way to the bus stop, or in the girls bathroom at school,
I loved perfume and I was gonna wear it.

Fast forward ten years....and I'm working in a shop, beachside. When I first started working there I was the only female employee. Then the boss got a girlfriend and she started working there.  One day she comes to me and she says, "Would you please not wear perfume to work anymore, it gives me a headache." I stammered and stuttered, "I don't know if I can do that."

I went home madder than hell. Who does she think she is, my father? I called in the next day, and told them I quit.

Fast forward another 10 years or so. I'm in California, for a month, helping my son and daughter-in-law await the birth of their first child. I'd been there 2 weeks, and one morning I stepped into the kitchen and my daughter-in-law turns and looks at me with that scrunched up facial expression that I've seen a few other times in my life and says, "Could you please not wear your perfume anymore, it's giving me a headache."  I felt as if I had just been slapped in the face.

I did leave their home that night, and stayed in a motel a few blocks away. I mean, I cried and cried and cried some more. I went back to their house the next morning and we patched things up, and I didn't wear my perfume for the next two weeks. I considered this as another casualty from this blasted war.

Recently my daughter took a day off from work. We were sitting and talking about stuff, the way that mothers and daughters do, and she began to tell me about two women she works with. These women have been holding their nose when my daughter walks by them, and exclaiming loud enough for my daughter to hear "Pshew". 

These women also have little desk fans that they have put up on the dividing cubicle wall, pointing down on my daughters head. (My sweet little baby girl doesn't even put perfume on her body, she sprays it on her clothes AND she doesn't douse herself in it like I do.) My daughter got so upset the next day when she went back to work and the "Pshewing" started up first thing. She exclaimed "Maybe it's your 'stinkin' attitude" and called them into the managers office.

I would like to report that the manager was able to stop the perfume war right then and there, but he didn't.

I now realize that I am not the only soldier in this heated battle and however long it takes, I'm not giving up. I'll never give up wearing my perfume! and so the Perfume war will continue..........