It's A Laughing Matter

Kids stink. Oh sure, they smell great when they first come out of the bath, but you have to remember why you put them in there in the first place. The problem is that just as the adult olfactory gets used to, or in our case gets burnt out in one range of odors, the kids grow some and a whole new set of smells start.

Consider the harrowing story of one friend who had just brought their first-born home from the hospital. It was the dreaded 2 a.m. feeding. Mom made sure that baby was topped off and handed him over to the second string to finish the paperwork. Now anyone who has had to change a newborn, especially a first-born, knows it’s not for the faint of heart or for those with delicate noses.

Mom tried to doze while dad made the change and, as my friend tells it, dad had a rude awakening. At first she heard the usual mutters of where’s the wipes, but then the tone and pitch of her husband’s voice started to escalate.

“Hey, what’s going on here? … Oh my God, where’d THAT come from? … What? It’s not stopping? … Honey, can you come here? Oh geeze, my bathrobe. It’s everywhere. Please God, make it stop. Help!”

Only the added expletive of “the humanity of it all” and the incident would have equaled the Hindenburg Disaster.

Think the problems are over when potty training is complete? Think again. Preschoolers have a mind of their own and if they take it into their heads that bath time ain’t what it used to be because, despite Mr. Rogers’ song “You can’t go down the bathtub drain”, they feel that they know that a vortex is just waiting for them. The parent is often left to the “lick and a promise” cleaning.

Basically this means, if you are able to wipe off most of the PB&J from the corners of the mouth at lunch, the dirt on the hands from the playground and the ketchup leftover from dinner, you are doing pretty dang well. Or as we used to say in our house when we went in for the final nighttime kiss of our sleeping angels, “Mmmmm essence of wet dog.”

But believe me, all these episodes are just the warm-up for the main event – The Teenage Years.

I believe Sadie had it the worst for she has fought the Stench and the Stenchwon. It started about the time her son transitioned from soccer to football. She wasn’t sure if the smell was carried in on the shoulder pads, helmet, cleats or jersey, but her son’s room stunk. Not only did it smell throughout football season, but it continued into the basketball and the baseball seasons as well.

And it grew. Pretty soon the whole back end of the house smelled. Then it started creeping downstairs, so that she found herself starting to sniff as soon as she hit the landing coming up the stairs. It was at that point that Sam took over.

In sweeping Stench elimination decrees, all cleats, pads and any other protective gear were banned to the garage. All athletic clothing was denied household access beyond the washing machine.

Then in a final blitzkrieg, odor-eaters were bought, carpets were cleaned and walls were painted. The Stench purge was complete, or at least Sam thought. Lurking in the corners of the closet, the Stench remained and waited.

By the time the kid went off to college, Sadie and Sam had declared victory. Oh sure, there were times in late high school, when the Stench attempted a comeback, but now that the source was gone, so was the problem. Or so they thought.

The first hint of trouble came when their son arrived home for a laundry weekend. While all the dirty clothes stayed in the laundry room, its arrival must have stirred the odoriferous element left in his room

For the next week, every time Sadie went by his room she thought she caught a whiff of something. So just to be on the safe side, she installed a few open boxes of baking soda on his closet shelves. After all, if the stuff can work in the fridge on long-forgotten 4th of July potato salad on the back shelf, then it would certainly take care of any leftover spores which might be contemplating resurrection.

Unfortunately, like that old B horror flick “The Blob”, Sadie suspected that the Stench simply started feeding on the baking soda, causing the stench to, once again, increase in size and strength. It was only after another round of fumigation, complete with Sam hefting trash bags of questionable items back into the garage, that olfactory order was achieved.

To commemorate this momentous occasion, Sam wanted to have T-shirts printed declaring victory. Sadie wasn’t so sure, because after their son’s latest trip home, Sadie thought she smelled something.

In the long run she decided to take Will Rogers’ advice, “Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.” Pretty good advice especially if you’re aiming for the back of the house.