The Smell

I spent today at a fabulous conference.  I was learning a lot, meeting interesting people and generally having a good time. I was having a good time until I was stuck in a medium sized banquet room with a lady who had on enough perfume for six French whores! No matter where I moved I could not escape the odor of flower toliet water, which meant my overly sensitive neurons processed a migraine in rapid time. Not a "Hey, I'll be arriving shortly, you might want to take something migraine! " but a "WTH were you thinking slam,bam, thank you ma'm migraine!" Complete with drooping face and other stroke like symptoms. Great fun when your in Atlanta with a couple thousand people you don't know.

Since leaving the room with my droopy face, impaired vision and poor motor control really wasn't an option, I took four of whatever pain killer I had handy and chased it with a coke that a nice football coach handed me when he moved to the back corner to escape the fumes, opps I mean perfume. I offered my pain killer to the coach in appreciation of the coke which he thanked me for. After the hour presentation and the Aleve kicking in some we left the room together discussing migraine triggers. Who knew you could find another migraine suffer at a conference because of someone choosing to bathe in perfume?

He was a very nice man, but I was interested in how he spotted me in the back and knew that I would benefit from a coke. His response? "I watched you move three times before you got to the back and figured you were either the most indecisive person in the world, or I wasn't the only person whose head was pounding from that God awful smell! Besides, my mom always does that rub the sides of her head thing when a migraine hits. She always had me bring her some aspirin and a coke when she got a headache.  Your pocketbook looked too big not to have some aspirin so I took a chance!"

What can I say but thank God for carrying a large pocketbook and a mom who trained her son well!