Smells

     Rather than write about the earthy, fresh scent of vegetables and fruits that I was constantly handling throughout my childhood, or the nostalgia of the dank, musty, nearly tangible air that sat in my grandparent's cottage, or sticky pine sap or an old accordion, I want to write about the worst smell of my life.  Maybe if I had gotten closer to a rotting deer, I mean really shove my nose where it wouldn't want to be I would have to relegate this smell to runner-up on this pungent rostrum.  But I haven't, so here it is. 

     I must have smelled it when I was seven years old and I can still feel it way up there in my nostrils.  It was then I realized all the terrible things that you could go through in life.  Innocence was lost; my childhood was stripped of a little piece of beauty and wonder.  My family was at a banquet or a party, you know, the very last place a kid wants to be.  However, the abundance of balloons drifting through the hall made it a little more bearable.  I grabbed a bundle of their ribbons and hauled the anchor off the table.  Curious, I tore off the red mylar wrapping around the weight and saw what looked like a conglomerate of hardened sand.  It had to be smelled.  It just had to. 

     It really didn't.  It really didn't.  I suspect I was a coke addict in a past life, because I didn't just sniff it, I snorted it.  The chemical just stayed up there, smacking my olfactory organs until they only recognized this terrible beast dominating them.  I could not smell anything except this one single scent for days.  While I was lying in bed, while I was building Lego's, while I ate.  It made everything in life terrible.  I survived and emerged a wiser child.