Pet Peeve #29

Stinky People.

I've had two encounters with stinky people in the last week and they both happened in grocery stores. Last week I was in the Moscow Food Co-op and mind you, it's a Co-op, where scents of Patchouli, incense and organic foods abound along with the majority of the shoppers being neo-hippies. I get that some of them are saving the aquifer by not bathing everyday but at some point they do bathe. I was in the store getting some tea (and I admit...incense) and while in the tea aisle a co-op volunteer stopped next to me to load up some shelves and the BO was so overpowering I had to grab whatever tea I could get to first and high tail it out of the aisle. Now I understand the conserving water aspect for not bathing regularily but what exactly happens to the air quality around you??? Believe me, taking a shower will not the end of the world be.

Today I was in Winco and I rounded a corner just in time to get a huge whiff of BO, stale cigarettes and alcohol. I looked up to see a 40 something who was shopping with his mother at the end of the aisle. I could tell he hadn't seen the inside of a shower for days by the crumpled clothes and 5 days of growth on his face. This guy still lives with his Mommy and she probably had to force him out of bedroom to help her with bagging the groceries. He probably pissed and moaned because he'd been on a 5 day bender of playing the new Halo game or was surfing the net for porn. He reminded me of an Ignatious Reilly-type from 'Confederacy of Dunces'. I could be completely wrong though as I could only take about 2 seconds of the stench before I had to change my grocery shoppping plan and skip the aisle that they were in and avoid them altogether while I completed the grocery task.

There is no way I could've lived before the invention of scented soaps and deoderant. Being around stinky poeple just makes me want to gag and well, you all know how I feel about that.