Phwagh! What's That Pong?

I have a very sensitive nose and find most perfumes and scents rather annoying to my olfactory sense. It's taken me a long time to find a perfume that I like and can actually stand, but have since discovered that they've taken it off the market. Darn!

Some perfumes and smells give me an instant headache (such as eucalyptus) while other scents give me an itchy nose and make me sneeze. Weirdly though, the perfumes that annoy me the most, don't actually have a smell to me. My nose is only able to identify them as an irritant.

At home my flatmate and young JD have to be careful what they use or spray and vanilla seems to be one of the few scents that I can consistently handle.

Recently I purchased a scented sachet for my car that was supposed to smell like mint.

"How bad could it be?" I thought yesterday as I hung it over the rear-vision mirror. "I eat mints so it's unlikely to cause any problems is it?"

Boy, was I wrong! As soon as I began driving the car, I fervently wished I had not placed it in the vehicle. The sickly minty scent grew stronger and stronger until all I could smell was something that resembled rotting fake mint. It made me feel a little nauseaus. The more I breathed the scent in, the more it felt toxic to my lungs.

Before I'd even drive 1/2km I had to open the windows in my air-conditioned car. Part of me wanted to throw the wretched thing out into the street, but the law-abiding part of me would not let me litter.

"Perhaps it will get better in a little while," I placated myself.

It didn't, it continued to grow stronger and stronger. Finally I made it to my destination near JD's school where I picked him up.

Getting into the car he said with an appreciative sniff, "What a great smell! I love it! It smells so .... so minty."

"Yuck!" I replied. "It's disgusting."

"If you don't want it, can I have it for my room?" JD asked, ever on the lookout for something free.

"Sure," I said, "As long as I don't have to smell it in my room."

Today I was a little afraid of getting into my car in case the stench lingered. Fortunately I made it to my radio station with my sense of smell and my sanity intact. Ok, at least my sense of smell was.