I don't know which smell is worse. I don't know which smell is more deserving as the scent that could make up a theoretical 8th ring of Dante's Hell.
But at least now I have a side by side comparison.
Loraine and I were jolted out of sleep around 5 this morning by the smell of a skunk spraying somewhere VERY close to our apartment. Sadly, it's not an uncommon way in which we're awoken. As I've written in here before, despite the fact that we live in one of mostly densely packed sections of the city skunks seem to love our neighborhood. I have no idea why; they just do.
So, after enjoying that olfactory alarm clock I went running a few hours later. And I was heading down the bike path near McCarty's Cove some guy walking along it chose the moment I passed him to exhale a lung full of cigarette smoke, aiming it (or so it seems) right at my face.
That was awfully nice of him. And it was one of those times I wished I carried a camera with me while running. I would have loved to have gotten a picture of the...smokehole so I could post it on social media.
For me, at least, those are two of the most horrid smells on the planet. Granted, I've never come across a dead body in the middle of decomposition, which I've been told is the ultimate in mind-blowingly bad odors, but skunks and second-hand cigarette smoke top my list.
Trying to figure out which is worse is a hard task. After all, millions of years of evolution have gone into making a skunk's smell putrid. However, smelling a skunk won't kill you, which is something second-hand cigarette smoke has been known to do. So how do you choose? It's like having to pick your favorite between vomiting and diarrhea.
There is no winner.
Don't worry; I'll keep pondering the idea. I just hope—really, really hope—that I don't get to do another side-by-side comparison of the two smells within a two-hour span any time soon. Because, and you can trust me on this, once is more than enough.
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