Well, fast away the old year passes, girls and boys. Or ought I to say 'lads and lasses'? Whatever, the point is that it is Christmastime again, and we can expect a return of all that goes with it: festive lights, festive music, a particularly cranky Jewish woman I like to call 'Mom', and, ah yes, the gifts.
Yes, lads and lasses, it's time for that annual gift exchange. You know the one. Where someone buys something for you, and you panic because you didn't buy anything for them -- not because you don't like them or because they're not important to you, but because you're on a tight budget already and you didn't think you guys were really at the gift-giving stage yet, but all of a sudden they're handing you this present and you get all embarrassed and flustered and mumble something like, "Oh, gee, thanks...now I feel extra bad for...um, leaving yours at home this morning! I'll have it for you, like, tomorrow or sometime after the holidays when I can make it back to the mall, I swear!"
Then again, if you're me (which you're not -- nyah nyah!), it means that Dolly calls you from the parking lot (!) to exhort you to come all they way out there to help her up the stairs. Remembering the time you had to help her flip down her confounded umbrella, you are somewhat skeptical. And so you sigh and gnash your teeth and rend your garments and rub ashes into your hair and whatnot, and you finally stomp out to the parking lot whereupon you find Dolly hoisting festively decorated bags out of the trunk of her car.
So you lose the 'tude, because obviously she bought shit for everyone and you can't be an ingrateful bastard to someone who went out of their way to get you a present, even if that same person requires more constant maintenance than an Angraecum orchid and you're a little tired of the constant, high-octane melodrama, but you help her carry all her boxes up to the office. Once there, the boxes (all of them identical in size, weight, and appearance) are passed out, and you receive one as well.
Happy as a clam, you retire to your desk, pop your box open, and are greeted by the heady fragrance of fruit. At first you're jazzed because it bears a striking resemblance to your absolute favorite scent, juniper. Then you catch a slightly spicy aroma mixed in, and you get a little confused (and disoriented, too, because damn the fumes are strong). You dig through layers of tissue paper to discover...potpurri. A huge-ass bag of potpurri from Pier 1. And a can of 'home fragrance' spray. And a scented candle. That scent? Ginger Melon.
Yes, my old friend Ginger Melon. Except not. Annabelle, meanwhile, gets all the same items, only in a fresh and lovely 'Tropical Spice', while Joanie receives the delightful 'Mango Tea' and Miranda is awarded with a sultry 'Desert Flower'. You stare at your bag of potpurri, wondering when you ever gave the impression that a) your home was in desperate need of odor camouflaging, b) potpurri was a must-have item for a 24 year-old bachelor who (apparently) already has problems projecting a particularly masculine image, and c) that the combination of ginger and melon was really your signature scent.
You poke your nose at the open end of the potpurri bag, thankfully tied shut, and catch a spicy, fruity blast that knocks you back about three feet and bleaches your nose hairs. You pull yourself back up on shaky legs and steel your resolve to have another look, figuring potpurri must be like an eclipse; you know, it's lovely, but you can't look directly at it because you'll flashburn your retinas and go blind. So you avoid direct contact with the potpurri this time and instead go for the canister of 'fragrance'.
And I'll say right here that I've never understood this stuff. Is it air freshener? Perfume for the couch? Designer mace? Maybe it's all of the above. Plus which, I think if you're trying to make your home smell nice, candles and (a modest amount of) potpurri are the way to go. They're more subtle and decorative than, say, a big metal spray can with the words 'home fragrance' emblazoned on the side, that might as well come with a free t-shirt that reads 'Our House Smelled Like Shit And We Couldn't Figure Out How To Make It Stop'.
Anyway, you pull out this canister of 'fragrance' and pop off the cap, giving it a tentative sniff. It doesn't seem too bad, although given that melon is one of your least favorite essences of all time, you're really just being charitable, but you give a cautious spritz into the air above your desk to see what it's like. A big burst of droplets shoot out of the thing like a cloud of tear gas, and before you can react, you've christened your entire workstation with the pungent odor of ginger and some undisclosed member of the melon family, and suddenly the smell is spreading, like a nuclear blast, until it envelopes the whole front office and everything reeks with the cloying, oppressive stench of one of Pier 1's most egregious redolent misfires.
Suddenly, as your lungs start burning and your larynx goes into anaphylactic shock, you hear Miranda spout from the other room, "Dear St. Francis, what is that horrible smell? Is someone burning a Hostess fruit pie?" And you cough and sputter your way over to the door and try to usher the stench out, but instead it just cleaves to the walls and the computer and the upholstery, refusing to be either evicted or diluted. And then Dolly saunters up to the front and gets a somewhat sheepish look on her face, asking you, "Er...is that the stuff I bought you?" And you try to be gracious, because she bought you a gift and it is the thought that counts -- although, seriously; what the hell was she thinking? -- and you nod through the tears, and Dolly kind of hems and haws and says something about how different it smelled in the store.
So here you are, six hours later, sitting at your desk with the sickly-sweet mephitis still looming over you like Kilamanjaro, and you're considering funneling boiling water up your nose to put your tortured olfactories out of their misery.
But of course, that's just if you're me.