smelling like a stranger

While I don’t consider myself to be particularly loyal to any one brand, there are certain products I buy that only one specific brand will do. One of these things is deodorant. I’ve bought the same kind for so long that I’ve come to associate the scent of my deodorant as my scent. Coffee has a specific smell. Apple pie has a specific smell. And, thanks to Procter & Gamble, I have a specific smell.

Unfortunately, I am now experiencing a type of smell-identity crisis. For weeks, I have been unable to find my brand of deodorant in any store…and I’ve searched them all. From large chain drugstores to mom and pop grocery stores, I’m beginning to realize that my favorite deodorant is gone.

So I’ve been searching for a new brand. A new smell that I can associate with me. The old brand I bought had scents called ‘Fresh’ and ‘Sport’ and ‘Clean’, and these were smells that I could recognize. Who wouldn’t want to smell Fresh or Clean? And if I was going for a more athletic image one day, Sport was the perfect choice.

But when searching the deodorant shelf, instead of finding a Sport and Fresh scent, I found ones with perplexing names. Names like Phoenix and Clix. I had no idea how a Clix would smell…in fact, I wasn’t even sure what a Clix was. I was equally confused as to what a Phoenix would smell like. Burnt ash, perhaps? Unsure, I discretely pulled of the lid and took a whiff…though this didn’t help. Was Clix more ‘fresh’ smelling than Phoenix? And were either of them as fresh as my old ‘Fresh’ scent was?

I continued to move down the aisle and found a deodorant that had an ‘Arctic Blast’ smell. While this made more sense to me than a Clix or Phoenix smelling deodorant did, I was still confused. Arctic Blast sounded more like a breath mint than a deodorant, and I was quite certain that I didn’t want my breath to smell the same way that my arm pits did.

In the end, I chose a deodorant with a scent called ‘Pulse’ because I thought it smelled most like my now defunct brand of deodorant, though I couldn’t be certain that this was true. Having sniffed so many varying brands of deodorant, my nasal passages had been over saturated and over deodorized, causing everything to begin smelling exactly alike.

The following day, fresh from my shower, I applied my new Pulse deodorant. Later that morning, while sitting in my cubicle at work, I lifted my cup of coffee to take a drink and thought I smelled someone within my sniff-zone…or close enough to detect a foreign smelling person. Not a stink-smell, but a different smell. I looked around to see who was standing nearby and saw that I was alone. I realized that the different smelling person I had gotten a whiff of was me.

Upon realizing this, I knew that I would be stopping after work to buy new deodorant. Because how could I live with myself when I smelled like a stranger?