The other day, my husband was out pumping the water off the pool cover so that we can get ready to open it for the season.
“Ewwww, yuck,” he said with his face all squinched up. “The water on top of this pool cover is rancid.”
“Come here and smell it.”
There are a lot of things that I like to share with my husband. The smell of stinky, gross water is not one of them.
As I thought about it, I realized that many of us do this all the time.
“Bleck, this milk smells bad. Here, smell it.”
“Oh my gosh, we have to clean these garbage cans. Come here, and smell them.”
“Oh man, the dog needs a bath. Can you smell him?”
What I don’t get is that why, if something smells absolutely disgusting, we all have some deep, dire need to share it with the people nearest, and often dearest, to us.
Although we probably do this most with smell, we also do it with many of our other senses.
Have you ever experienced the following: you’re looking in the refrigerator for something to eat. You open a container of leftovers. You try a bite. But you’re not sure if it tastes quite “right.”
So what do you do?
Ask your significant other or roommate or child to try it.
“Here, taste this. Does this taste bad to you?”
Chances are, if it tasted bad to you, it’s also going to taste bad to the person you’re trying to get to eat it.
What is the mindset behind this? “If I’m getting salmonella, someone else is going down with me!” Is that what we think?
What about when we see something that is disturbing? I’ll bet you need to share that with someone too.
We say that it’s like a car crash – you don’t want to look, but you just had to. And then share it with your friends.
“Ick, there’s a dead animal in the road with it’s guts all over – hurry, turn around and look.”
Why on earth would we want to make someone else queasy? Yet that’s exactly what we do all the time.
Find something that looks like an abandoned science project in the back of your fridge? Well, don’t just throw it away. Make sure that you share the gross velvety green fuzz producer before sending it to the dump.
We even do this kind of thing with the sense of touch. I remember years ago when I was getting rid of a shirt because I didn’t like the feel of it (I had gotten it as a gift).
Before placing it in the bag to donate, I got my husband involved. “You have got to feel this,” I said.
“Why?” he asked.
“Just feel it,” I responded impatiently.
“Okay, there, I felt it,” he said.
I asked if he knew what it felt like.
“No,” he said and looked at me skeptically.
“It feels just like a dried-out deflated balloon!” I said.
“Ewww,” he said. Followed by, “You’re right – it feels just like a balloon. Yuck.”
And I certainly can’t forget sound. Sometimes during dinner, my husband or my stepdad will be cutting something on their plates, and suddenly, we hear “screech…” You know, that horrible sound a knife squeaking on a plate can make. Kind of like nails down the blackboard.
Not too long ago, the sound came from my stepdad’s plate. I flinched and asked him to please not make that noise again as it creeps me out.
“You mean this noise?” my smarty-pants husband said as he tried to squeak his knife.
He thinks he’s funny.
Just wait until the next time the milk goes bad. Really bad. Horribly stinky bad.
I think then I won’t share. I’ll let him discover it all on his own.