It's interesting how when you are hungry, I mean really hungry, your sense of smell intensifies. Today on the metro, after a pathetic lunch, I was joined by a woman who apparently fell into a swimming pool of perfume, dried off, and sat next to me. The scent was cloying, sickly sweet, overwhelming. I tried to hold my breath and then surreptitiously to hold my nose and engage in shallow mouth-breathing until she disembarked a few stops later. I gulped several lungfuls (is that a word? No? Well, it is now.) of blissfully fresh air while I could.

Alas, her replacement was a living, breathing, walking fart. Seriously. I know, I couldn't believe it either. This morning, some intestinal gas was born (possibly in an explosion), disguised itself as a fat human woman, put on some business casual clothes and a little make-up to start the day. Maybe the fart had a light lunch but more likely a heavy lunch balanced out with a gallon of diet soda. Then it decided to board the metro and sit right next to me. Right next to me. For the entire rest of the trip. I was trapped by the sealed window on one side and the stinky-wind-made-solid on the other side. It wasn't as unbearable as the perfume and certainly not as deadly as 'The Sea Captain,' but it was, in its own way, mentally disturbing and kinda made me want to vomit out of my nose. As soon as I escaped, I healed my withered and abused lungs and burnt nasal passages* with some blisteringly hot, but clean, outside air. I bought some flowers too. And gave them to TP. The end.

*when we were kids and someone would expel some gas (for some reason, a favorite activity and subject of discussion for my family), Dad used to exclaim, "you burnt my nose!"