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Today I would like to talk about smells. Bad smells. In particular, the Old Town smell. I could never understand how people lived with this horrible rotten-egg-fart smell everyday. I assumed you just get used to it, but the thing is you don’t get used to it. Take for example Mike. I met Mike at the bar, an older man with thinning hair and a mustache, in his mid-to-late 40s. Mike works at the Georgia-Pacific factory in Old Town. He rolls and embosses toilet paper. He hates the smell in the air, but he stays here. I’m sure Mike could find employment somewhere else where toilet paper is rolled, but he is complacent. Once you think you have no control over an element, you often choose to resign yourself from ever doing a thing about it.
I have a theory on how to fix these smelly problems – bubbles. I think anything that produces a stench should have to live with that stench. I propose a bubble over the factory. Made of what, I am not sure; most likely some sort of plastic, much as I envision smokers wearing diving helmets. Smokers produce unpleasant odors as well. I have tried for some time now to avoid the downwind of a smoker walking in front of me on the mall; there is no solution but to hold my breath. If they had to wear bubbles too though, they would be forced to live with the stink, and I could continue to enjoy the fresh air. Of course by this theory any person bathing themselves in patchouli or exuberant amounts of cologne/perfume would have to wear a full body armor bubble, trapping the whole smell. It isn’t as though I can’t handle the occasional stink – a rancid burp, a fart, fish bait, even minor sweat, there are just some smells the world could do without.
I have even gone so far as to devise a solution for each bubble type. For the factory, an underground tube would be built leading from the loading dock directly to the grocery store so that we all may still purchase the Quilted Northern. The factory would simply shoot the toilet paper rolls out, just like the bank shoots the tube of money to you at the drive-thru. This would mean all paper products from the factory would have to be pleasantly scented to avoid picking up any of the smell from within the factory.
As for the smoking helmets – a drop slot at the top for food, cigarettes, etc.; plastic glove slots in the sides of the helmet, much like the incubators for premature babies, and of course a mounted cigarette lighter from a car. As far as the full bubble armor suit goes, probably something along the lines of the bubble boy. While I don’t see the bubble thing picking up in the near future, I do appreciate the efforts the university has made to move away some of the smells. For example, the signs outside of buildings requesting smokers stand at a certain distance, although a red measured line would help, as many of these people seem incapable of finding that distance. Now if they would just get that grinding metal smell out of the Union …
Amber Williams could never work as a trash collector.
