I would gladly give up the funk whenever and wherever I could convince someone to accept ownership of said funk.

Man, some fragrances should come with an FDA warning. I bought a LOTION from the Body Shop a good many years ago. The last time I used it (about 4 1/2 years ago), my friend Ban commented, "what smells?" (and not in a good way). Just recently, I applied the same lotion. After a half day of this wearing it, I felt the need to shower, I showered, and then I went out. As Andretta and I were sitting in my car, she asked me what smelled so unusual. That would be me. Problem is that this scent is so all-pervasive that it has set up camp in a certain important foundation undergarment that I own, and I can do nothing to evict it.

I should mention that this lotion contains patchouli. Having had this experience with patchouli, I've been looking for it in what little fragrance shopping I do, and can't seem to find it anywhere. This leads me to believe that they don't make patchouli anymore, and that all incarnations that we smell today are actually remnants leftover from the 70s. Strong, smelly, overpowering remnants. If this theory is, indeed, correct, it explains a great deal that we've taken for granted about today's patchouli-scented individuals: perhaps they aren't applying fragrance so much as they've smelled this way from birth. Horrifying, I know, but it makes me glad my folks weren't hippies. Further, my theory explains the high incidence of pot smoking among such individuals. If I couldn't escape the cloying scent of patchouli, I'd have to chill way-the-fuck-out, too.

"But Violet!," you're saying, "why don't you just throw out the lotion?" "Because I grew up during the Depression," I fib. In reality, I grew up at the Depression's representative knee, drawing on my grandmother's sense of resource preservation at all costs. If I were to throw out this lotion, I would be transgressing the memory of a woman who routinely gave me dead people's freezer foods or unworn underwear after they'd passed (and, NO, I did not eat or wear these items). To get rid of this albatross, I'll have to use the lotion on my "solitary" days or find someone willing to take it off my hands. Either way, one day, on a wayward summer breeze, you'll be reminded that, when it comes to funk, some people just won't, or can't, give it up.