Sunday, November 27, 2005

Imagine the smell

My wife has been sensitive to smells as long as I've known her. In a previous life, she must have been a bloodhound. If I snack on something, say some Kalamata olives or a dill pickle spear, and she enters the kitchen well after I've finished, she'll sniff and ask "what have you been eating?" If I don't reply immediately, she usually guesses.

There's a scene in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves where Snow White teaches the dwarves how to bathe. "Do we have to wash where it doesn't show?" one of them asks. Stop and think about that. That is a practical question from someone who works in a mine all day and whose house was a trash heap of dirty dishes and filthy clothes before this princess arrived. Why bother washing some place where it won't be appreciated?

So I have to wonder. What did this dwarf cottage smell like when Snow White first arrived? What would my wife do if she came upon this cottage?

Walk past it, I think.

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