Dean Poling
A spray of fresh air spritzes across the restroom.
This device typically makes a sound like a camera shutter. Not a comforting sound to hear in a public restroom. If it’s the restroom where you work, however, you get used to it.
The device does not take pictures (at least that’s what they tell us). It squirts air freshener. Freshening the air is a good idea for a restroom.
It’s an automatic thing. It spritzes air freshener every little bit just to keep the facilities, well, not fresh, but not smelling like, well, the facilities.
The device doesn’t know when someone has used the facility and, when, to put it delicately, a spritz of air freshener is called for (or so they tell us).
It just spritzes whether anyone is in there or not ... at least, I guess it does.
Does an air freshener really spritz if no one is around to hear it? Sort of like that question about a tree falling in the woods, does it make a sound if no one is there to hear it? Or for that matter, do trees smoke cigarettes and dance when no one is around?
But I digress.
And isn’t it strange about air freshener? People regularly use air freshener to cover up bad odors, everything from Aunt Penelope’s cigar smoke to the dog to rotten potatoes to the bathroom. Sometimes, the freshener does the job. Other times, it’s like putting cologne on a pig. The freshener just makes it smell worse, especially, at first. After a while, it’s easy to associate the smell of the air freshener’s pine or potpourri to pure stink.
But I digress.
So, the other day, I’m washing my hands in the restroom sink. I grab a couple of paper towels to dry my hands. The air freshener makes its shutter sound. A spritz of wet air freshener plasters the top of my head.
My head has been doused in air freshener. I smell like a regular eau de toilet.
It’s not a bad smell, but an overpowering one. I’m suddenly one of those dudes who applies way too much cologne.
You know, those good-hearted souls who slather on after-shave like they are dousing a fire. Those guys who may well have cologne coming out of their shower taps rather than water. You know, those guys you can smell five minutes before you see them ... sniff, sniff, here comes Bob. Or five minutes after they’ve left ... sniff, sniff, I smell that I just missed Bob.
The name Bob is used here as an example. This by no means means that anyone named Bob does such a thing.
But I digress.
So, for the rest of the day, I walked around with this cloying perfumy smell that I wasn’t quite certain anyone else could smell or not. After all, when was the last time you mentioned to Bob that his cologne was too strong? See what I mean.
But I could smell it. I didn’t so much smell pretty as I smelled piney. Yet, it wasn’t a smell that made me feel like I was part of the great outdoors.
Instead, I kept thinking: I smell like a bathroom.
Not in that most apparent of ways but in the way someone might spray a restroom after Aunt Penelope hit the chili a little too hard.
I smelled like a bathroom in that cover-up kind of way. I felt like a guy who had something to hide when I had nothing to hide at all, thank you very much.
And again, unless your spouse is around or you work with second-graders, who’s going to tell you that your smell is questionable?
But I digress.
So I lived with my air-freshened head, catching a whiff of it occasionally throughout the day. But I must say, and I mean this in all sincerity, if I see that even one hair has returned to the top of my head, I will be standing under that air freshener far more often, piney smell or not.
Dean Poling is The Valdosta Daily Times assistant managing editor. His latest book, “Waiting for Willie,” a novel, is available at The Valdosta Daily Times’ 201 N. Troup St. offices.
