Smells like teen spirit Tabu

Just a short post today, to report a near freakout I experienced this morning in the perfume aisle at Long's Drugstore. Every time I go in there I get sidetracked by something – today I went in for a bottle of saline and ended up hypnotized by the hundreds of different flavors and formulations of toothpaste, a small and very strange selection of sewing notions, rows upon rows of cheap makeup, and finally, the cheap perfume section. I've been thinking about Love's Baby Soft ever since Rozanne wrote about it a few weeks ago, and now, as if by magic, there it was on the bottom shelf at Long's.

It smelled exactly how I remembered it, only stronger! Not satisfied merely to sniff the box, I sprayed a spritz up into the air and jumped back out of the way so as not to become permeated with it. No such luck – I saw the mist landing on my sleeve and instantly sneezed. That was when I noticed that the shelves were full of all the cheap drugstore perfumes I remember from my childhood – Jean Nate, Wind Song, Jontue, Emeraude and even my secret favorite, Tabu – to name only a few.

Of course I had to smell them all. And suddenly I couldn't stop myself! I was smelling even perfumes I know I don't like, just to see if I still don't like them, as well as all kinds of new ones I'd never heard of – for instance, stinky designer "fragrances" named after B-list celebrities like Shania Twain and the Olsen twins. Weird!

By the time I got out of that aisle I reeked to high heaven. All I wanted to do was buy my stuff and get out to the car where I could change into a fresh sweater. And that was when the near-panic began. The store had seemed almost deserted when I went in, but now that I was ready to check out it was somehow seething with millions upon millions of white-haired senior citizens clutching paperback books and heating pads and gallon jugs of inexpensive wine ... Every cashier in the place had at least five people lined up in front of her (I did actually count), and it ended up taking me almost 20 minutes to finally get out of there and out into the fresh air in the parking lot.

It's now the end of the day and I can still smell a hint of Tabu when I move – I must have got some in my hair.