'Twas The Night Before Los Angeles..

And other oniony-holiday smells

My flight to Los Angeles leaves soon and my backpack still smells like high school gym class B.O. There’s a completely honest reason for it, seriously. 

Every year on Christmas Day we spend the early afternoon with family. The late morning we exchange gifts. Each person, one at a time, we go around the room tearing into wrapping paper—green plaid or silver and gold stripes. Pink paper dipped in rainbow glitter. Packages wrapped with white and black ribbon that droops down the sides of the boxes in tight ringlets—whatever the color scheme of the year is. Each turn, all eyes on you. You carefully unwrap, slowly pulling out this mysterious item. Internally you pray to Santa that this isn’t some odd-ball joke gift. Unless you’re like me and are thrilled with just about anything.

Everyone says I’m hard to shop for. The truth is, I never ask for anything because there’s nothing I need. Most of the stuff I haven’t already bought for myself is expensive and would be absurd to ask for. This year, my Mom insisted that I tell her something I wanted. After a while of averting her inquiry, I finally gave in and told her: A Phillips Hue gradient light strip for my TV. When she heard how much it was she said, “What else?” On the phone, I shrugged my shoulders and said, “nothing.” She sent me an Amazon gift card instead. Honestly, I’m glad she did because I’d rather the gift card. I really don’t want more stuff.

The first half of my twenties were spent collecting things. Mostly art and spooky little trinkets, the last three, trying to downsize. I don’t really want a voodoo chicken claw anymore, but it seems like bad juju to throw away. Sometimes the crazy thought crosses my mind to try and sell nearly everything in my possession. Kind of like the guy that traded his red paperclip for a house via Craigslist. But, reverse.

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Anyway, once all of our spent cardboard, wrapping paper and Scotch tape pile into a mountain against the corner of the living room, we sit down for brunch. We call it brunch but, really, it’s sort of breakfast, sort of everything else. And, it usually starts around 3pm. Most of the time there’s an array of things to choose from. Baked oatmeal, eggs, sweet potatoes, bacon and Brussel sprouts (my dish), mashed potatoes, and so on. This year on the menu, we had a wild card item: Italian stromboli.

It wasn’t until after we got home that night that it first caught my attention. I thought, man, something stinks. I lifted my arm and gave my pits a sniff but couldn’t tell if it was me or something else. It was while putting away some newly received clothes that the smell wafted by. I stopped for a second, buried my nose into my new hoodie and took a giant whiff. If my brain was hooked up to a machine, you’d see my olfactory cortex light up a room. There it was, the onions. And then, I started smelling everything. Every. Single. Thing. That had been in the house smelled like onions. For days it felt like we were living in a Shrek scratch-and-sniff sticker. Since then, the smell has dissipated on everything. Everything except my backpack. On four separate occasions my brand new pack sat on the back porch from the morning to well past sun down to air out. I’d prop it out there in the sub 30 degree weather and think, today’s the day. And, yet, here we are. The faint, but very obvious, onion smell lingers. They say time heals all wounds. Hopefully that doesn’t exclude my backpack.

The silver lining here is that on a plane, with all that recycled hot breath and body odor, it’ll blend right in.