Ripe

Yesterday I was trying to tell my oldest to do something. I can't remember what and it is not important to the story. When he would approach me I would smell something. I couldn't put my finger on it.

"Come here. Closer,"I said to him.

"What?"

"You smell weird, like onions," I said. I sniffed his head (I removed his hat to do this), I sniffed around his shirt, I sniffed myself, I sniffed the surrounding kids.

"It's probably my breath," my oldest decided. He ran upstairs to fix the problem. He came down again.

Onions and toothpaste, I smelled. Funk onions. At this point we were in the kitchen and I was standing there inspecting. It literally took me forever to put two and two together. "Lift up your arm," I said. I took a whiff. What I encountered caused me to cover my mouth and nose with my hands and bolt the other direction.

"You took a shower last night!" I cried.

My oldest was laughing at my reaction (which was not meant to be funny) and was telling the younger ones that it was a fun trick to pull on Mom to make her run away.

He said, "Yes, I took a shower."

"What's the deal? Where is your deodorant?"

"Well, I don't always put it on after I take a shower..."

"Get up there right now and scrub yourself like crazy to get that rank off you and then put deodorant on."

"I have an idea! I can just put deodorant on!" He really hates taking showers.

"No. You will just smell like a stinky boy trying to smell good at the same time. It doesn't mix well. Get up there."

"Oh, alright." He sort of moped while he went upstairs, but the end product was nice. I can't believe that a nice ten year old boy like that can produce such reek.

If you have boys, prepare yourselves, ladies. I told Dear Sir about it and he was mortified. I have never known Dear Sir to ever smell bad. Ever. I think this man produces flowers out of every orifice. "This has to be stopped," is about all he can offer from work. I can picture him, the Man of Clean, banging his fist on his desk in defiance of dirt and rank. "We can defeat this, Rachel, my competent side-kick."

The other night on our date we were talking about liquor. He was telling me about a girl he knew that loved Yagermeister (not sure if I spelled that correctly). He told me of a time he tried it to please her and he went hot from his belly north and almost threw up. I was telling him that I was not a fan of it either. Which moved us on to Tequila. He told me of a time some guy bought him a round of it and he drank it to be polite. He told me he went straight to the bathroom. I am certain that I had alcohol poisoning in high school because after I drank much vodka and too much warm tequila I was sick for two weeks. That was the last time I ever got drunk. We laughed about how we hate the same drinks. We both love gin though (although Dear Sir will not touch any liquor anymore period), we noticed. "I think it is because we are both so clean," I said.
"What do you mean?" he laughed.
"It tastes like Pine-Sol."