It started with onion rings. I was craving them. I had to have
them. And I wasn’t about to let the size of my butt dissuade me
from getting them. So Junior and I went out yesterday and satisfied
my cravings before I went nuts.
It started with onion rings. I was craving them. I had to have them. And I wasn’t about to let the size of my butt dissuade me from getting them. So Junior and I went out yesterday and satisfied my cravings before I went nuts.
At the bottom of the bag, mixed in with the crunchy ends of the onion rings – the best part – was a piece of cardboard called an “odorama card.” At first, I was a little confused. I didn’t know if the cards were to cover up the smell of fried onions or if they were to cover up the smell of Junior, who believes that he shouldn’t have to bathe all summer.
Turns out the cards belong to a movie, “Rugrats Go Wild.” At certain parts of it, you scratch the card and then sniff it – and you get a nose full of old fish, dirty feet and, if you’re lucky, strawberries.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I stopped trying to smell things right after I became a parent.
I swear, the day before I became a mom, I appreciated all fragrances – -roses in bloom, a blazing fire, the scent of onion rings being cooked and then WHAM! One whiff of a dirty diaper and I didn’t want to smell anything ever again. I know parents who deliberately stopped taking allergy medications just so they would have plugged up noses until their children leave home.
So I figure the people who make odorama cards don’t actually have kids. Because they don’t understand that from the time your child is born, they stink. Well, boys do at least. At some point – usually after they are potty trained – the girls stop stinking and become obsessed with smelling like Barbie perfume.
But boys, of course, are different.
Parents of boys LIVE in odorama. We don’t need no stinking cards. We smell unwashed feet – and worse – every day. And that’s why, when we go to the movies, we don’t need to scratch a card to smell something yucky. We just need to follow our noses to the nearest boy.
Boys smell. I think they actually like it. Look, if you don’t believe me – try this experiment. Take two boys. Put them in a room. Close the door. Wait one minute. Open the door. If you don’t pass out from the smell, you’re cheating. Take off your gas mask and try the experiment again.
Boys actually have contests to determine who is the loudest and smelliest. Girls don’t. We don’t want to be loud or smelly, and we would rather die than have a contest for either. Look, haven’t you wondered why women always have dogs? It’s so we have someone to blame any accidental gas leaks on.
And we women are almost obsessive about pedicures and frequent sock changes. We don’t want stinky feet. And don’t even get me started about room deodorizers. You’ve never seen an ad for Glade targeted to a guy, have you? No, it’s just for us girls. We don’t want old, yucky fish stench in our homes.
So I’m seriously wondering about the Rugrats people. What were they thinking? Did they really believe for one second that sniffing feet and fish would enhance our movie-going experience? It’s gross. It’s disgusting.
And it is most definitely a boy thing.
But I’m a mom. And mothers have lived through worse. So I’ll be there at the movie, scratching and sniffing. But it will take a whole lot of onion rings to make me forget the horror.
