Every year I take a break from blogging for the last two weeks of December. I will be sharing some of my old favourites in the meantime and will be back in January with new material. This post was originally published on October 19, 2015.
The other night my husband and I went out to dinner with a group of other people. The food was good. Our servers were friendly. The conversations that swirled around our table touched on everything from the latest episode of The Walking Dead to the current score in a baseball game that some of the people we were eating with were absolutely obsessed with. In short, it was a very nice get-together.
About halfway through the meal, though, I caught wind of an overpowering cloud of perfume and started sneezing and coughing uncontrollably. I was so itchy that I had to grab my coat and stand out in the foyer for five minutes to catch my breath.
Luckily, this was a minor reaction. It was annoying and uncomfortable for a little while, but once I stopped coughing and figured out how to avoid the person who had decided to bathe in perfume that day I was okay.
I have a relative who has had asthma attacks in this scenario. I know other people who have had migraines.
For many people, perfume and cologne are a harmless scent that everyone loves. For some of us, they’re a trigger for allergies, asthma, or other medical conditions.
In a perfect world, these two groups would never meet.
Yes, I’m joking about that. Mostly. 😉
What I would like to happen, though, is for perfume and cologne to become something you don’t notice unless your face is pressed into the body where it was sprayed.
If other people can smell which way you walked down the hall…
If I can smell you from across the room….
If the entire elevator smells like dead flowers several minutes after you got off of it….
If anyone can ever taste your fragrance in the air…
It’s too strong.
There’s a difference between catching a slight whiff of a scent when hugging someone and nearly being able to see a cloud of it drifting through the air because it’s so strong.
Please be considerate.