i stink

my wife has a bionic nose.

no kidding. it's as if she had some tragic accident upon reentry and lost her olfactory nerves, and nasa dropped six million bucks to put in super sensitive bionic ones.

for example: i can smoke a pipe. nothing too obnoxious; some black cavendish, perhaps, or maybe some whiskey cured. i can then enter the house, strip off, toss all my clothes in the wash, take a shower, scrub my hair twice, clean every inch of me, floss, brush my teeth, swish listerine, put on deoderant, don fresh clothes, give myself a spritz of kenneth cole black, and when she gets home will announce after kissing me and wrinkling up her nose: "you stinky like pipe!"

this is also the woman who, upon my announcement that i had been considering taking up the pipe cooed: "ooo, i love the smell of pipe smoke!"

not on me apparently.

when you have a bionic nose, and a pipe-smoking, sweaty husband, and two boys who are fascinated by dirt and bugs and grass, and three cats, the house can be a painful place to exist.

luckily in this day and age, there is an entire supermarket aisle dedicated to removing all residual scents of everything you love from the carpet, the walls, the furniture, and the air. and their target group for sales is my wife. well, and maybe a couple of other wives who have lost their sense of smell to some sort of bizarre accident and then had them replaced with mechanical means. we have oust and febreze and candles and whathaveyou. but perhaps the thing most present in our house are the plug-in style air fresheners.

i see them in the commercials. some sort of oil or pad or other such thing that you shoot a small trickle of electricity through and it emits--"old man cologne!" "that's not old man cologne, it's lavender!" "lavender? that's crap. it smells like some sorta really bad aqua velva." and they keep cranking out new and better ones. "lasts longer!" "smells better!" "now with less aqua velva and more lavender scent!" i keep loose screws and nuts and nails in ziploc bags in a box in the garage. my wife keeps outdated plug-in air fresheners.

she was overjoyed to discover the latest and greatest in air freshening technology: little statuettes that have built-in sensors and sneeze out a spray of essential oils to make the atmosphere pleasant only when it is necessary. they are a bit larger than the plug-in versions, but are not limited to a place where a socket is readily available. they have sort of an art deco look, and can be placed on any shelf, table, or on top of the tv.

they blink one baleful yellow eye at me, and i am immediately distrustful of them. there are three throughout my house: one on a shelf in my bedroom (near my side of the bed), one on the end table at the end of the hall (and near the cat litter box), and one on top of the tv (where the kids, cats, and myself end up spending the bulk of our time.)

i begin to notice a disturbing trend: any time i pass one, it spits its spray venemously as i pass. every time. without fail. but never when my wife passes.

"hey, what kinda sensors you say were in these things?" i ask casually one night.

"motion sensors. they sense when someone is near, and if it has been awhile, they spray the smelly stuff."

"motion sensors?"

"yeah, why?"

"you sure it isn't stink sensors?"

"what?"

"well, every time i pass one, it goes off. these things are giving me a complex. like they can smell me and no matter how good i think i smell, they think i stink, and are doing their damndest to counteract it."

my wife, the bionic-nosed woman, just laughs, and calls me "silly."

but i see them eyeballing me. they know. as soon as i get close, they are going to cough out their combination of lavender and aqua velva, or rose and old spice, or whatever it is. they will even try to spit it directly on me.

and i begin to wonder if perhaps this new technology is created by some subsidiary of nasa after years of extensive research based on nanite scent detectors they placed in the noses of wives who lost their olfactory nerves in horrible space shuttle accidents.

or maybe i need to start wearing old man cologne.