In which I revive memories of PE and they are as horrible as you’d expect

Readers, assemble. I need your advice!

I’ve been trying to use all this dead time to do a couple of minor tasks each day, since I have little inclination to do anything really useful (I was chatting to my cousin and we said that being isolated can feel a bit like having a cold – you know your brain cells could stretch that bit further, but they don’t want to).

This afternoon I started organising the drawer in my dresser. A basic case of moving some plasters to live with the other medicine stuff in a cupboard, moving a couple of make up things I don’t use that often to somewhere I can actually see them. It beats thinking about dinner, which let’s be honest is now everyone’s only favourite hobby. Then I came across this monstrosity, which had until a recent tidy-up been hiding in a bag some 10 years after someone gifted it to me:

I gave it a squirt.

I thought, this is the scent of body odour.

I thought, I am in year nine getting dressed after PE.

I thought, this is the smell of thirty teenage girls who have just been forced to run in circles while a very unfit older lady chats to another unfit older lady on the side line and occasionally shouts at you.

Then I realised: the sweaty smell I notice on myself after a long day in adulthood is anywhere between ‘slightly gross’ and ‘god what did you do.’ But in my head, I’ve always considered it like, oh I guess I’ve done some sweating, good to know my skin works properly, I’m going to carry on with my life. I’d never really associated sweating with the actual term ‘body odour.’ I mean, I’ve inhaled next to some pretty disgusting humans over the years and it’s been a case of ‘oh, that’s a person who doesn’t have access to a home and a shower’ or ‘oh, that’s a person who probably needs prescription deodorant, that must be hard.’

At no point in the last 24.5 years have I inhaled bodily odours and thought holy fuck, someone please saw off my nose.

Until just now when I sprayed Into Glamour into the air and had a proper sniff.

I knew that smell can invoke memories in a way that other senses don’t, and I knew what sweaty human smells like. But I’ve only just realised that deep in my brain, Impulse’s nicely packaged Into Glamour Body Fragrance equals BO.

I’m never spraying it again.

What am I supposed to do with it? It’s still half full (I’m aware this means I probably took it to school in year nine). I know aerosols are flammable – I know a guy who chucked an old can onto a bonfire and it exploded – so is it a good idea to put it into the recycling? Or even the black bin? What if the crushy thing in the collection lorry pierces it and I kill the local bin collectors? No one deserves their last breath to be full of this stuff.

Maybe I should keep it to keep mosquitoes away? Or in case I ever have a date and need the person to leave really quickly? Or maybe I’m the only person who associates Into Glamour with disgusting teenagers and uncomfortable quick changes after PE?

I can’t believe I’m now thinking about PE. I THOUGHT I LEFT YOU IN 2010. I legitimately might have to go for a shower.

Drop me a comment if you have any suggestions for what I can do with this stuff! Let me know if you have any similar smell-memory stories! Oh and if you’re a brand rep from Impulse: it’s not your fault your product has activated some long-forgotten associations. I’m sure some of your other fragrances are lovely. I’m not likely to risk trying them out, though, in case they take me back to year eleven maths or something…