I used to like the smell of matches. Now, I can’t smell a match without also smelling the phantom smell of someone’s crap–so that’s ruined. I mean, when you spray lilac scent into a bathroom that you just defiled, you don’t make it smell like flowers. You make it smell like poo and flowers. Which is way, way worse. Now someday I’m going to be walking next to a lilac bush and, instead of enjoying the fresh smell, I’m going to be reminded of that half-bath that was 3 degrees hotter than the rest of the house. And the unsettlingly humidity.

Maybe we should start spraying poo scent in the kitchen...

And sometimes people spray stuff that smells like food. I guess this is the train of thought there: “Okay…. I just pooped, and it smells really bad. This is kind of embarrassing. What am I going to do? Oh, thank goodness–there is some orange/citrus spray that I can spray so one of two things will happen: 1) The next person to walk in here will not be able to smell my poo and be fooled by this fresh citrus scent that they will surely assume is always present in and around the commode, or 2) This new Citrus/PooAir hybrid that I have created will be etched into the olfactory center in their brain, coming back to haunt them someday when someone makes the mistake of peeling an orange in a car.” Can we all just agree to end the practice of mingling (formerly pleasing) scents with the smell of crap?

Which brings me to today, and the most insidious of scents: Pumpkin Spice. I was at a school and told my co-workers I was going to use the bathroom. I was informed that some pumpkin spice deodorizer was found under the sink (it was a small bathroom). Even a good ten feet outside of the door my eyes burned from the thickness of the pumpkin spice.  When I walked in, I noticed that the floor was slippery, but I assumed someone must have just missed when they peed or something. No big deal. The part where I knew something was wrong was when I tried to wipe and almost slid off the toilet seat (I’m not joking in the least). I tried to steady myself with my feet, but I was like a fawn on ice. There was some sort of oily layer covering everything in the bathroom–like a good millimeter of pumpkin spice scent. My first thought was “Something really bad must have gone down here (Or maybe not gone down–on the first try, at least).”

So now this is ruined for me too.

I found the spray bottle, and it was a super-concentrate. “If contents come in contact with skin, immediately wash with soap and water,” it warned. Now I’m standing in a gas chamber of pumpkin spice scent, barely able to keep my footing, imagining that my ass is starting to burn while I vigorously scrub my cheeks. And all of the sudden, I realize that I cannot smell even a hint of poo in the air. I could, however, smell pumpkin spice every time I coughed for the next four hours….