I try to make it to the gym at least five days a week. Partly so I can get an hour of cardio in (and some much needed US Weekly browsing) but most of all so Archer can have some social time with other kids.
I love my gym. Contrary to every other L.A. gym there is no house music blasting in the background. No personal trainers working Gina Gershon in plain view of us normal folk. No Dolce and Gabanna gym bags encrusted in Swarovski crystals and monogrammed labels flashing in neon lights. No muscle tees and cell-phone clad agents name-dropping furiously on their blue-tooth headsets. No women sweating pints of Chanel 5 in the cardio room.
Nah, at my gym the cardio room smells like B.O. and farts, which I can handle. It’s the incredibly strong and cheap-smelling perfume that makes me want to vomit.
One of the women who works in the gym daycare wears the cheap stuff. A lot of it. In fact, her perfume is so strong that I can smell whether or not she is working when I step foot in the gym, several hundred feet before I reach the daycare room.
Truth be told I love her, the one that stinks of K-Mart’s perfume isle. And Archer loves her too and when I see (smell) that she is working I feel so conflicted.
“Yes, Archer loves her! She’s such a sweetie!”
“No! Now Archer will smell of her for days!”
Because he does. Whenever I come back from my workout to pick him up he smells like he has just been baptized in bottles of Exclamation by Coty perfume. And even after a shower or bath, he still smells.
I had been contemplating whether to call and leave an anonymous message as an anonymous parent who “doesn’t know who is wearing the very strong perfume but is wondering if, maybe, she can tone it down a little.” I never did of course. I’m the kind of person who will eat bad fish instead of sending it back because I don’t want to be mean and/or upset the waitress and end up poisoned and/or devouring a fresh filet of Halibut and boogers.
So either the nice daycare lady is psychic or someone else did the dirty work for me. Another mom, sick of her child reeking of musk must have complained because voila, the woman no longer smells of anything. And HALLELUIAH, neither does Archer.
And so even though I’m relieved beyond explanation that Archer no longer comes home stinking of sweetened urine, a bigger part of me is concerned that her feelings didn’t get hurt and/or she somehow thinks it was me who complained.
Because I would have, eventually said something. I think.
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