Would you like to sample our new scent?

Sitting at my desk this afternoon I have laughed aloud several times at a little secret that has recently come out about one of our near and dear friends. She is a sample queen. Entering a department store she heads straight for the perfume counter and begins spraying not one, but multiple scents on herself. This alone was cause for laughter but it is the image of her ripping open the perfume sample inserted in a magazine and rubbing it vigorously on her neck and wrists that has me laughing like a loon. I love the innocence of it and how it reminds me of how excited I would get when my mother would give me the samples from a shopping trip. How I would horde the tiny glass tubes in my cheap vinyl purses using them sparingly lest I run out before our next trip to the mall.

I remember my first bottle of perfume. A whole bottle?! You could fit at least a hundred of those glass tubes in this sucker. It was Charlie, no doubt purchased at the local drugstore. I have actually sniffed at a bottle or two when buying mascara or something at Walgreens. Ugh! My poor parents having to smell that scent all day every day. It wasn’t until adulthood I was told a good three or four squirts on your neck, wrists, and chest were not necessary. I was a toxic cloud of cheap perfume roaming the halls of junior high leaving my peers to gasp for air when I walked by.

Oh, and then there was Tea Rose. My mother actually gagged every time I wore the stuff. I thought it made me more feminine and again applied it like a fresh coat of paint leaving no body part uncovered. For her own part my mother to this day wears four ounces of perfume every day. She doesn’t stop there either. She buys the box sets. Perfume, lotion and bath powder. Après shower it is lotion, powder then perfume. If you hug her at 10:00 a.m. you will still smell like her at 10:00 p.m. (the next day). That is actually one of my pet peeves. If I wanted to smell like someone else’s perfume I would buy it myself. Then again I could just subscribe to a few more magazines and be set.