By Staff
I stink.
Hmmm. If I were a betting man, and I am, I would guess that some of y'all out there are thinking, "What? What's he talking about?" I'll bet that others of you out there are thinking, "Well geez, tell me something I don't know. I've always thought he stinks."
Still others amongst you might be thinking, "Hmmm, if he does stink, why is he telling us about it?" That's a really good question, an honest one, and I'm gonna answer it as truthfully as I can.
I'm telling y'all about it cause I write this column, and I do happen to stink. Literally. I smell bad. I'm a tad rank. Well, more than a tad, actually. Right now, I'm so smelly that I'd pucker up the nose of a polecat if one happened to walk by. I'm of such rankness that I've actually been encouraged by my family to go into the guestroom and write this column, as being in here gets me out of the main areas of the house.
Simply put, I'm a stinky old middle-aged man sitting over in the far corner of my guestroom. I smell like a leaky septic tank, and no sympathy is going to be coming my way anytime soon.
I guess that I really can't complain too much about it, 'cause I hate being around someone rank myself, and I'm not gonna be a literary hypocrite.
I guess now is a good time to tell y'all how I've managed to join the world of the nasally damned. It happened today at lunch -- I ate at one of the best Italian restaurants in these parts, a place called "Luigi's Bistro," and it's right here in downtown Macon. I'd never eaten there until today, when I met some people at noon for a business luncheon.
I knew they were going to be special when they first brought out some fresh baked bread along with some marinara sauce for dipping. God, it was great, and then they brought me a bowl of their asparagus soup. I know that asparagus soup sounds about as exciting as Preparation H, but theirs is good, amazingly good. After finishing it, they brought out the main course. I can't even pronounce the name of whatever it was, but it was angel hair pasta swirled together with tomatoes, virgin olive oil, parmesan cheese, and garlic -- lots and lots of garlic. But it was so good that I ate every single bite of it.
The people who run Luigi's Bistro aim to please your palate, and I admire their culinary ruthlessness in doing so. I now find myself a devotee of their establishment, but there is one tiny little negative, and that's the fact that I am now a walking clove of garlic.
My breath smells like garlic, my hair smells like garlic, and the pot roast that I just enjoyed for dinner even tasted a little garlic-y. Simply put, I'm ranker than a dead frog in July, but I loved my lunch, and now I'm a big fan of Luigi's Bistro.
And sure, I stink so badly that I can smell myself as my fingers move across this keyboard, but even that has a few things going for it. Why…
1) I'm the safest man in Georgia tonight if a vampire gets on the loose.
2) No one is going to ask me to sing or recite poetry in my current state.
3) If garlic is good for the heart, I'm good for at least another seventy to eighty years.
4) Taking a bath isn't gonna matter too much for me one way or the other.
5) Maybe there's a law out there that makes it illegal for people to discriminate against those of us that smell bad. If that's the case, I have a chance at filing a suit against some of you nasally intolerant types for some big bucks one day, so be careful whatcha say around me in the future.
So that's it for this week. Y'all please don't feel sorry for me as I've got something going for me that very few of y