i’ll have a bug sandwich with that latte, please

I am in the middle of a Puerto Rican rainforest eating a bug sandwich because a tree frog landed on my arm when I was four. We exchanged petrified glances, it leapt away, and I spent the next twenty-plus years of my life believing that the tiny red-eyed amphibian was some manifestation of The Great Cosmos, sent to instill in me an insatiable sense of wonder at the natural world, and bestow upon me my duty and calling in this life: Save the rainforests.

I lived in San Juan, Puerto Rico until I was five and I remember Puerto Rico well; although the memories are distinctly, and unalterably, from the perspective of a child who was too young to be unnerved by giant flying cockroaches, and who was thrilled when the little geckoes scampered off, leaving their tails behind in my hands. The Puerto Rico I knew had a coconut tree, a banana tree, a couple of pet parakeets (all named Charlie), some fireflies, and a tree frog. It also had a tropical rainforest, the place where said tree frog came briefly into my life and unwittingly changed the course of it forever.

Growing up, and continuing into my adult years, I studied plants, biology, and rainforest everything with intense passion and dreamed of returning to the rainforest one day. I also longed to return to Puerto Rico—the Puerto Rico that consisted of a coconut tree, a banana tree, a couple of Charlie’s, some fireflies, and a tree frog.

In December of 2005, I returned to the first place I knew as home. I came to Las Casas de la Selva, the site for the Rainforest Enrichment Project, as a volunteer research assistant with the EarthWatch Institute. I had signed up months in advance and happily maxed out credit cards to purchase plane tickets and requisite jungle gear. “I’m going to be a botanist,” I repeated to myself every time I left the outdoor store with another bag of camping miscellany and truly ugly outdoor clothing, “I’ll need all this stuff.” The opportunity to become actively involved in rainforest conservation was a dream come true, utterly priceless.

After arriving at base camp in the southeastern mountains of Puerto Rico, it took less than two minutes for me to realize that Puerto Rico had changed a lot over the last two decades. Namely, it had a lot more bugs than I remembered, and a lot less indoor plumbing.

I stepped off the bus transporting the volunteers to the site, strolled toward the dining hut, took in the grand sight of fresh salsa and yucca chips, and THWACK! Big, black bug in the eye. It was huge, not your average garden variety fungus gnat. And I have eyeball phobia—I’m afraid of mine and yours. My hands flew up to my face and I blindly asked whoever-was-there-no-one-in-particular where the bathroom was.

I felt less than comfortable in my rainforest surroundings given that I just had to hold my eye open and pull a giant insect out of it, but I had only been there for a couple minutes, and I knew I had a full ten days of dodging insects ahead of me. I figured I’d wash the bug germs off my hands and rejoin the group as if I were a rugged outdoorsy type who was used to this sort of thing.

It’s difficult to get that clean feeling from an icy cold trickle, roughly the diameter of a spaghetti noodle, and a bar of natural soap that, until your unsuspecting hand came upon it, served as an overstuffed sofa for a squishy little lump of baby lizard. Baaadd neeewws, I reflected, I’ll just dry my hands on this old pink towel, carefully avoid the sleeping towel frogs nestled in the folds, and make haste for my hand sanitizer. Now, I realize that facing the prospect of not being able to wash one’s hands for the next ten days may not induce the same hyper-neurotic, paralytic dementia in everyone. It just so happens that if I were asked to describe what I thought hell was like, I would answer that hell is having perpetually dirty hands combined with an eternity of inadequate water pressure.

After the first fairly challenging day, I was able to adjust to my surroundings as well as any plumbing-loving urbanite could reasonably be expected to. I was secretly proud of myself and continued to harbor visions of botanizing in ugly jungle pants. Then I went frogging.

We had been frogging all night in the rain, and when the rain subsided we gathered on the forest floor for a nice packed-lunch dinner of fix-it-yourself sandwiches and granola bars. I was fond of the fix-it-myself sandwich because it meant that I never had to suffer the wretched substance that is mayonnaise. I could skip it and opt for the mustard. I could also forfeit my portions of deli meat and elect to subsist on cheese alone. On this night, we had worked hard and I was extremely hungry—so hungry that I was tempted to barter bandanas and duct tape for crusts and lettuce.

I first noticed the sandwich being eaten by a fellow volunteer sitting across from me. The narrow beam from my headlamp became a spotlight on the grotesque. The sandwich was no longer a sandwich, but rather a veritable menagerie of swarming organisms. I quickly turned the spotlight to the half-eaten sandwich I held in my own hand. It was covered with a thick, dark layer of moving insects. No white bread in sight.

Staring down at the abhorrent spectacle I held in my hand, two opposing forces battled for supremacy: Everything I Believe To Be True and Hunger. EIBTBT declared, “That. Is. Dis. Gus. Ting! Throw it into the trees, now!” But Hunger countered sensibly, “You’re hungry, you’ve already eaten half of it, and it doesn’t seem to be bothering anyone else. So what’s the big deal?” Much to my surprise, I switched off my headlamp and finished eating my bug sandwich.

As we made our way toward base camp that evening, tromping through razor grass on steep, muddy slopes, the rain returned in full tropical force. It cleared the atmosphere of the congested flying insect traffic, and I could finally breathe. I could smell the rainforest smell I remembered from my childhood, there’s nothing like it. Looking out through the rain-induced clarity, I noticed that I could identify plant species even in the dark. I could differentiate between the shapes of leaves in shadows, and between the subtle, myriad shades of green. And amid tumbling gallops through tangled understory, I was struck with that sensation I had upon my first meeting with a tree frog: pure wonder. This forest is home to an inconceivable variety of life. It is extraordinary. And the truth is, it may not survive civilization.

I have yet to reconcile my city-mouse sensibilities with my impassioned devotion to rainforest conservation since, it would seem, to be a good conservationist, I would actually need to spend more time in the rainforest—with the bugs and without plumbing. Could I ever learn to get used to it? Could I go back with an open mind, cast off my preconceived notions of cleanliness and expand my definition of edible for a higher purpose? for justice? for the rainforest? My mother, who has remarked that I could never live in a city that didn’t have a certain famed, ubiquitous coffee shop on EVERY block, thinks this is highly improbable. “You have never liked camping,” she reminds me. And she’s right. Sometime between my first encounter with a tree frog and my last, I developed into an obsessive-compulsive city-girl with eyeball phobia and an incorrigible desire to do something good for my first true love, the natural world.

When asked recently if I would go back, I answered with a hesitant, “Ummm, yeah . . .” Then, suddenly remembering that I’m still paying for the abundant stash of jungle gear at the back of my closet, I added, “of course I would.”

With plenty of bug repellent.

dropped off the edge off the world?

Actually just the continent. But I'm back and I'm way up in my Spanish vocabulary and minus all my luggage. Which would you rather have?

a brief history

I like relativity and quantum theories
because I don’t understand them
and they make me feel as if space shifted about like a swan that
can’t settle,
refusing to sit still and be measured;
and as if the atom were an impulsive thing
always changing its mind.

~ D. H. Lawrence

I have a Swiss cheese kind of science background—substantially rich in some places, holes in other places. Explain why a clock ticks faster as it nears the event horizon, no problem; add numbers larger than the amount of fingers I have, that’s asking a lot. Bifurcate a logistic equation, sure; multiply fractions . . . I have no idea how to multiply fractions.

Among the many and varied causes of this Swiss discrepancy are two major contributors: The first is the jerk who sat behind me in 7th grade math class. Jerk put bugs in my hair unbeknownst to me until sometime toward the end of class when the bugs migrated from my head and commenced roaming the rest of my topography. The discomfort caused by the insects was negligent compared to the devastating humiliation caused by sneering, pointing peers, so, I never went back. Hence, a mathematical education that does not exceed the 7th grade level, and, holes. I quit going to the rest of my classes shortly thereafter, having concluded that school was for learning about humiliation, fear, and self-loathing, and not where I could learn about what makes clouds look the way they do or how those rings around Saturn got there in the first place. A few bad years and a lot of dangerous substances later, I re-entered school as high school student, where I met the second major contributor.

Pete taught science classes at the alternative high school I attended, introduced me to what would become an insatiable, absorbing passion for scientific understanding, and saved my life. I was fortunate enough to attend Pete’s Space Science class where I discovered that I was not stupid, just miseducated, and that science, more than anything else, yielded the most satisfactory answers to my insufferable and growing tower of mostly unanswerable questions. Thus began some filling in of the empty spaces.

I became addicted to Scientific American. I read Asimov, Feynman, Hawking, Gribbin, and Davies. I read about atoms, relativity, quantum theories, chaos theories, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, the paradox of self-referential systems, history of science, and philosophy of science. I even received a [fancy tech school] “Medal of Achievement in Math and Science” and a small scholarship because the admissions committee assumed I had the mathematical qualifications due to the high level of promise I demonstrated in my science classes.

In college I took all the chemistry, physics, astronomy, biology, and botany classes I could take without calculus prerequisites and taught myself the math I needed on a case by case basis. I am in love with covalent bonding, I dream chemical reactions, and I have a veritable encyclopedia of astronomical and botanical lore and nomenclature stored in my brain.

When I enrolled in college for the first time (a long time ago), I fully intended to be a Physics major and go on to become a Professor of Physics. I registered for pre-algebra three times and finally passed on the fourth try. I was yet undaunted and still cultivated dreams of theoretical physics notoriety. I would say that naivety is the mother of courage. During the subsequent decade of my on-again-off-again college career I would register and withdraw from college algebra more times than I have fingers. However, because I understand now that learning mathematics requires a step ladder process, and I could not seem to leap up even to the bottom rung, I finally gave up trying to take college algebra—bye-bye Physics major, hello Arts and Letters.

I still want to become a Physics Professor. I took Complexity in the Universe I with the noted physicist Dr. Semura and more than once he suggested I become a Physics Professor. I take this to be the greatest compliment I have/will ever receive in my life-time. I followed up with Complexity in the Universe II and discovered that I really enjoy writing science based, big questions, what-does-it-all-mean-reflection stuff. So, what does an Arts and Letters major who loves science but can’t add, and who loves writing but wants a steady income, grow up to be? A restaurant manager. An art school applicant. An avid “science for the lay person” reader. And maybe, someday, a poet.

taming of the shrewd perfectionist

I have a secret weapon against the shrewd perfectionist. A little tid-bit I was lucky enough to come across in a book about the publishing business written by a prominent New York editor: A good writer will write 98% total crap in his or her career and only 2% not total crap. That 2% comprises such works as Moby Dick and Sons and Lovers. But I suspect it took Melville and Lawrence a whole lot of crap to get there. This same editor (whose prominent name escapes me at the moment) also divulged the following gossamer shred of aspiring writer hope. Referring to the majority of manuscripts he receives, the author claims that “Yoda better syntax had.” Ha! Take that deliverer of non-encouraging words.

Since I now wield a nice percentage ratio, I figure I can commit to writing total crap for most of my career and somewhere therein should be a nice 2% of not total crap that I can extract, put on display, and say, “See, I’m a good writer!” and no one else will ever know the depths of the foul language from whence it came. Also, I’m quite certain I syntax have better than Yoda.

And so do you.

As a writing tutor, the most common introduction I hear is, “I know this is really awful. I’m a terrible writer.” Not even a hello or my name is. And this I have learned to respond to with complete silence. I hand over a pencil and explain that sometimes it’s easier to see things with a pencil in your hand. Something about putting the physical activity of holding a pencil together with the isolation that normally accompanies the writing process seems to bring about a keener awareness of the connection between the words on a page and the ideas in the mind. I try to make it clear that when we look over a piece of writing, we are trying to make sure that the sentence on the page actually says the sentence that’s in the head.

This is a two-way journey, of course. Sometimes you don’t know what your head thinks until you see it on the page. This is why I write: To figure out what the hell it is I want to say. And this is precisely where that 98% crap comes in handy. It often takes an entire essay of really bad writing to find out just what, exactly, your point is. And if you don’t spend that valuable 98% getting to the 2% that actually says something, how else will you ever get there?

Certainly not by believing that you don’t know how to write or that your writing is really terrible. Writing is a skill, just like cooking, that can be learned. Sure there are probably better cooks out there than you, a writer always has Shakespeare to live up to, but no one else can make exactly the same thing, ever. And no one else can ever think the same things in the same way. So, don’t stop yourself from finding out what you think before you begin. And then, when you know what you think, try to make your sentences reflect your thoughts as accurately as possible. We’re not aiming for world-changing grammar; just a sentence that makes sense. The rest will follow.

Remember, we have a nice and friendly ratio to work with. Commit to your own 98% crap with clarity and accuracy. Try to connect the act of thinking with the act of writing. Tell the shrewd perfectionist that you’ve got work to do. Then go to your writing tutor and learn about semicolons.

i don't like gum

I don't see the point of chewing something that isn't food. Which brings me to my next point: It's not food. You're not supposed to swallow it. And I don't know about you but I believed them when they told me if you swallowed gum it would stay in your stomach forever, or for seven years or something. So I never chewed gum becuase I was afraid I might accidently swallow it and spend the rest of my life with gum in my stomach. How could you accidently swallow it? you ask. Well I'm not sure but that's what I was afraid of and the last time I chewed gum, which was five years ago, I accidently swallowed it.

everybody read

Reading is extremely important to me but I hadn’t noticed the extent to which reading has been a cornerstone of my entire life until I thought about it for an assignment. It all began with some star bellied Sneetches who had “bellies with stars” and some plain bellied Sneetches who had “none upon thars.” My mother must have read Dr. Seuss’s Sneetches and Other Stories to me a million times when I was very young because I had it memorized before I could actually read the words.

These stories and their lessons are an integral part of my moral composition.

From The Sneetches and Other Stories I learned not to judge others by their appearances or differences; I learned that stubbornness can keep you stuck in one place while the whole world goes on around you; I learned that sometimes you don’t do the right thing and now it’s just too late; I learned not to fear something just because I might not understand it completely. I don’t know who I would be today if my ethics weren’t firmly grounded in the teachings of Sneetches, but I perhaps wouldn’t have grown up to be such an ardent advocate for the lives and rights of indigenous people around the globe.

I also loved the music of Dr. Seuss. His books incited a love for words, lyricism, literature, and, ultimately, poetry in all its incarnations. I have read that Dylan Thomas and W. H. Auden cite Edward Lear and nursery rhymes as their first poetic influences so I don’t feel so ashamed of admitting to my totally un-academic primary influence at this point. Besides, the Sneetches led to Winnie-the-pooh, which led to E. B. White (and consequently, as far as moral composition goes, vegetarianism), which eventually led to Jack London, Herman Melville, Shakespeare, Tennyson, and D. H. Lawrence, to name a few influential favorites.

But more than a moral compass and few fancy literary references, reading gave me worlds to explore, ideas to ponder, opinions to disagree with, new ways to see reality, and sanctuary. I didn’t grow up with television or friends; I grew up with books and what I found in them became everything to me. I still count the tubby bear with very little brain as one of my oldest and dearest friends and I return to visit frequently. I truly am what I read.

In my experience, reading has always been a solitary endeavor. Prior to my introduction to the Everybody Reads program, I had not considered the widespread implications of a group of people reading and discussing the same book outside of academe. It seems to me now that this particular project has the potential to connect individuals in a community in profound ways. Most fundamentally, if only for a brief time, reading the same book gives all kinds of different people something in common. Even if ideas and opinions about the book differ, an incredibly diverse population may be linked through an artistic medium.

Suddenly, the businesswoman has something in common with the server who is delivering the wine. And the city commissioner has something in common with me. It seems a venerable platform for inciting communication across social boundaries.

I am interested in the different ways to communicate a message to a diverse population, but I am especially drawn to the mission of Everybody Reads because of the message of next year's chosen book A Long Way Gone. I feel a personal attachment to the plight of Ishmael Beah because I’ve had a close friend who was a Sudanese war refugee. Ojulu and I were coworkers in a commercial greenhouse and we spent long, extremely hot hours together doing difficult labor, learning to communicate, planting seeds, trading stories, laughing, and we even once prayed for a crop of canna lilies that we accidentally planted upside down.

Ojulu taught me to suspend my preconditioned notions of the way the world works, and I tried to teach him how to drive. He had a bullet wound in his ear and scars the size and shape of small pebbles all over the side of his head from shrapnel. Ojulu was fluent in five languages, and rapidly learning English, and had dreams of becoming a doctor. Still, customers would walk in to the greenhouse and shout at him as if he were deaf, dumb, or no more a person than the shrubbery they were shopping for.

I know that what Ojulu suffered in his life is unimaginable. I know that he continues to suffer from the war and he always will. Witnessing the cruel treatment he endured in the place that was supposed to offer safety and relief from the cruelty of his homeland was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I have hope that Ishmael’s story may enlighten a public, provoke empathy, and instill compassion so that others like him will be safe here and offered the respect and solace that they deserve so much.

Maybe the community reading of A Long Way Gone will change some people’s minds and attitudes. Maybe it will cause one person to think before he or she assumes something about a person’s life based on the color of their skin. Maybe communication can create change.

Maybe the world would be a better place if everybody read The Sneetches.

the real truth

It’s not that I wasn’t smart enough to pass the fourth grade.

I was plenty smart, ninety-eighth percentile smart. Reading was my favorite subject and I looked up the words I didn’t know before I was asked to, just for fun. That’s how I learned what tangible and nomadic meant. Science was my second favorite. When our class was learning about weather, I memorized all the different types of clouds and their names: cirrus, nimbus, stratus, cumulonimbus. Over and over I said those names, letting them roll and sweep and bounce through my head. Just thinking those words was fun. It was the same with birds, and then constellations: Orion, Ursa Major, Cassiopeia, Cygnus. I knew more constellations than anyone else in the fourth grade. And Math was always easy, just boring.

So when Ms. Jostess requested a parent-teacher conference to discuss Why Autumn Is Failing The Fourth Grade, my parents were a little surprised. Then they were a little more surprised to find out that I hadn’t done a single homework assignment since oh, about the second week of the school year, which was almost over now. I was doing fine on all the in-class activities and my test scores clearly showed that I was capable of doing the work, so why hadn’t I done any homework? they all wanted to know.

I lied and said that I didn’t know it was supposed to be turned in; I accidentally threw it away; I didn’t understand it; I didn’t have time; it was boring; I lost it; my sister stole it; and, yes, my dog ate it.

But the real truth is that I quit doing my homework once I realized that if you didn’t do your homework, you had to sit on the bench during recess and you weren’t allowed to go out and play with the other kids. The other kids said I was ugly and stupid and weird and had big teeth and too many freckles and they threw dirt in my hair and tried to pull my pants down, so going out to play with them at recess was the last thing I wanted to do. I’d rather sit on the bench.

I thought I had found the perfect solution: don’t do my homework, don’t go to recess.

That’s why I was failing the fourth grade.

yes, it's just me

I was craving saffron risotto fritters, and when you’re craving saffron risotto fritters, well, really nothing else will do, so I took myself out to one of my favorite restaurants, the only place I know to get said SRFs. I waited an absurdly long time to be acknowledged by the bartender because, “Oooohhh you’re dining alone I’m sorry I thought you were waiting for someone else I didn’t realize you were by yourself I’m sorry.” Yes, it's JUST ME, which means that I, more than the cooing, kissy couple next to me, deserve a drink. I should have left but I really wanted my fritters, you know?

Also, I’m in the business, and when a single diner comes into my restaurant, I’m very nice and I do whatever I can to make the single diner feel comfortable because I’m a single diner and I know that it’s usually an uncomfortable, at the least, experience.

So anyway, I’m all awkward and gawky at the bar next to cute couple with accents, receiving bad service and sucking it up because I want nothing else at the moment but saffron risotto fritters. And a mojito.

And in a way, I guess I also wanted someone to just be nice to me.

When I finally get my drink, there are two small, black straws in it but one of them is about ¾ inch shorter than the other. What the hell? I had to keep evening out the straws to get anything out of them so I looked like an idiot and my fingers got all sticky.

Then, my SRFs were delivered. I picked up the lemon wedge and squeezed . . . lemon juice right into my eyes. My eyes teared up so badly that I couldn’t see and I was trying to wipe them with my sticky mojito fingers.

Now I looked like a blithering, ridiculous single diner crying alone at the bar over saffron risotto fritters. And you know what? That’s exactly what I was.

this is the conversation that you don’t want to have with the cabby, which unfortunately I did

“What the hell’s takin’ this light so long, I’m just gonna run it.”

“Um.”

“Hang on there. Huh, huh. It’s just like that old turtle in that one commercial with the car, huh, huh, you seen that one?”

“Um.”

“Yeah, I’m waitin’ for em to tell us that Larry’s the father. You know, we all know he’s the father of Anna’s baby. And that Stern guy, you know, he’s just a scumbag murderer, you know he should be going to jail. What’d you say, fourth and what?”

“Lincoln. Fourth and Lincoln.”

“Yeah, that Stern guy, he’s a baaad man. He needs to be punished, you know, he’s a murderer. He needs to be put in jail. Then he’ll file some appeal cause he’s a lyin’ cheatin' lawyer, you know. He’s out there treatin’ Anna’s baby like a, a, just a money maker. Not even like a real person, you know, like he’s the Devil. Yeah, he’ll be punished. Like the devil he is, you know. GOD will punish him.”

“Um.”

translation happens

It's the first day of the Spring term, and I walk into my Introduction to Spanish Literature class five minutes late and without my travel mug. Where did I leave my coffee mug? is the foremost question in my brain. And second is, Where in the hell is my coffee mug?

I take my seat and notice that la profesora had written the words "La Edad Media" on the chalkboard, which I quickly translate as "middle age." I'm a little confused about why we're discussing middle age in a Spanish Lit. class, but I figure it will lead into some significant literary work about middle age or written by an author during his or her middle age. You know, the Reverse Obscurity tactic employed by Literature Professors across the nation: "Let's think about the advent of the three-hole punch. Hmmm. . . and what does this suggest about Eliot's vision of civilization in The Waste Land?"

So, whatever, that's fine with me. If I can remember where I left my coffee mug, I'll consider my time here well spent.

La profesora had apparently instructed the class to form groups (my least favorite classroom activity, second only to "introduce yourself to your neighbor"), and discuss amongst ourselves, in Spanish, what middle age meant to us.

I caught the tail and broken-end of some of these discussions, but I had no idea what anyone was talking about. What the heck does a feudal system have to do with middle age? Unfortunately, however, I was the first student called on to share with the class, in Spanish, what middle age meant to me.

"I have many hair that is grey, and the eyes no see anymore much because I being near to the middle age."

Silence. Laughter. Lesson learned.

La Edad Media = The Middle Ages

rest assured, i'm not asking for an "a" for my alliterative rhyming haiku

Love Letter to Duane Locke

Oh, Duane,
you bitter old bastard, nobody loves
spiders. If she says she does,
she’s just saying it to impress you. However,

I am a woman who puts the spiders out.
I do not love them, but I will not stand for
spider killing in my house.

As for the rest, we agree on many things;
although I’ve never seen do-it-yourself sponge painting
turn out very well, I would love to sleep
in a in a sea of dithering daffodils. Also,

I prefer flowers, even dead ones,
to limousines, and I am thrilled by caressing
the skins of most living things.

And you say you don’t care
if some beautiful woman falls in love
and kisses your poems after you’ve been dead
three hundred years, but,

you must have thought about it enough
to have made that comment. Duane,

I am your damn dark sparkle of sunflower shadows.
And if you pull the arrows out of the side of the oak,
my Druid blood will soak into your bones,
and I will finally be home.

quitting smoking stinks

The worst thing about quitting smoking is that the whole world stinks. And I don't mean the world is a dreary place since I decided to deny myself one of life's greatest pleasures. I mean the world stinks.

Four weeks ago I walked in the world blissfully unaware of what it smelled like. Today, a stroll through the mall, or a quick jaunt across town, induces the olfactory equivalent of nails screeching down a chalkboard. Aside from the intrepid piss smell that permeates public transportation as naturally as clogs permeate Portland, getting on the bus used to be a relatively benign olfactory experience. Now, a bus ride is a malodorous assault on my virgin sniffer. Aqua Net, Downy, Pabst, Revlon, Marlboro, Calvin Klein: all agents of scentual harassment. And these are the masking scents.

Like the elephant exhibit, humanity smells like sh*%.

The ability to smell someone’s dirty hair and watermelon Bubblicious from five feet away is a horrifying side effect of not smoking. At school, I passed a guy in the hall that smelled like a combination of bad breath and leather waterproofing spray, and I had to move from my seat when someone sitting next to me smelled like moldy socks and salmon.

Yesterday I took a long bus ride home from the dentist and, unable to endure the stench of damp humans, I stuck my nose into the sleeve of my jacket and quietly pleaded for my old, dulled sense of smell back. I imagined sniffing bleach every day before I left the house to damage my olfactory cells. I thought about carrying around a small container of coffee beans that I could bury my nose in for bus trips, and I envisioned sneaking sniffs of whiskey from a flask during classes.

What happened to my right to choose what odors are allowed in? If I wanted to smell a pink geranium, I could lean in close, stick my nostrils right up to the blossom, and wah la. If I wanted to find out what my tomato soup smelled like, I could put my nose near the bowl and take a whiff. Twenty-seven days after my last breath of non-scented air, my right to a serenely odor-free existence has gone with the smoke.

According to the Daily Success calendar that came with the nicotine patches, Day 27 recommends: “Treat yourself to a bottle of cologne to celebrate your improved sense of smell.”

Listen, if you’ve ridden the #33 bus on a rainy day, you’d know there ain’t nothing to celebrate.