SMELLY Elevators

I do hope the title caught your interest.

If you are male, I REALLY hope it caught your interest.

Elevators are very small cubicles with very bad ventilation.

They go up and down in the same general space all day long. And lots of people touch the floors and walls thereof.

Just that thought makes one a little queasy.

But I do digress. This is about smells--smells in small spaces.

Working as I do in a public building (a courthouse), there are lots of people. Some of them smell like humans. Some smell like flowers. Some smell like spicy things. Some smell like stale tobacco. Some smell like, well they are parents of very young children.

It is a very mixed bag.

And the elevator doesn't care.

And, usually, when the elevator opens its doors and vomits its contents onto the floor, the odors attached thereto go with. Usually.

But there are some humans that like to leave their pheromones behind. They like to mark their territory, so to speak.

My best example of a marked elevator was one in Bakersfield. It went to the various level of the parking garage attached to the high-rise business tower I worked in. It usually carried men in suits and women in office attire. There were a few women suits, too. (Like me) Nice ties, fancy looking heels, clean hair, all nicely pressed and faintly (business subtle) smelling of the day's choice of cologne or perfume.

The elevator screamed law firm chic.

But there was a bank in the building. And its sales force was on the third floor. And on the third floor, cellphone man would appear to head to the garage elevator.

Cellphone man spoke to no one. Except the person (or computer or alien or whatever) on the other end of his cellphone connection. Cellphone man was not quiet in his conversing with the entities. In fact, he was quite animated.

That alone would have made him notable.

This was not law firm chic.

But he had one other attribute that one could not block with earplugs.

He wore men's cologne. Lots of it. He must have bathed in it.

If he walked by you the wave of odor would wash over you and linger. It made you want to take a bath.

If, god forbid, you were in the elevator with him............

You felt like taking a sauna followed by a steam bath. Then a long hot soak. That was just to get the molecules out of your pores! Your clothes would have to be burned because you could never get the smell out.

After cellphone man, the smells of real people are not as offensive.
I don't say that they are great, but they aren't as obnoxious or as interfering of my space as that was.

So, I plead with all persons who indulge in the use of artificial smelly things, PLEASE remember that a little goes a long way.

But more important, the smell of human is, well, natural. It is human and real.

Can't we just be us?