So, I’m sitting waiting for my 12:00 class to begin. The seat next to me is free and this guy comes in and sits next to me who I believe may posess the most repulsive paint-meltingly strong BO that has ever eminated from any human being. I mean, he sits down and immediately my face did one of these :eek: followed soon after by :mad:
I am literally leaning away from this guy at a 45 degree angle for the entire lecture trying desperately to inhale the last few molecules of unsullied air within 10 feet of me. The room was full, so there was nowhere for me to take my now seemingly irreversibly damaged nostrils and lungs, unless I wanted to leave the class and miss the lecture.
Mr. B.O. guy, how can you not be aware that you are constantly engulfed in a cloud of the foulest, most rank, most fetid air that can ever eminate from a human? I mean I can almost see the tainted fog hanging about you! Even if you can’t smell it yourself, don’t you notice people recoiling in disgust as you come near them? Don’t you ever wonder why passersby seem to gag and wretch as you and your unholy foulness approach? Can you be that oblivious? Even if, for some reason you don’t believe in deoderant, how about a shower once in a while? If not for yourself, do it for the rest of humanity. No other human being should be made to endure the eye-watering, stomach ruining hell that went through sitting through an hour lecture trying desperately not to breathe any of the caustic fumes that you are surrounded in.
I beg you, for the love of humanity, wash yourself!!!
“If you want to make an apple pie from scratch,
you must first invent the Universe” - Carl Sagan
Wow, that’s an accomplishment for a student. I once witnessed an old man clear out most of a bus, but how do you get that way when you’re university-aged?
I have to agree with Matt. I had a roommate who had one of his friends over. They had a disorder which made fluid run from the sores on their legs. It smelled HORRIBLE. I was polite, left, and well… he had to buy my futon couch because he ruined it because of the discharge. But I was polite and understanding.
I have to be honest with you, in re-reading my OP, I may have oversold the point a bit. I mean he had BO, but it wasn’t really as bad as I made it sound. It wasn’t unnaturally bad. I think that maybe it has more to do with the fact that I was right there, shoulder to shoulder for a whole hour that probably made it seem worse than it was. No, this was just normal BO. He was a severe computer nerd type with the unkempt hair and the ill-fitting unattractive clothes, who probably hadn’t seen the inside of a shower in a while. The kind of person that doesn’t have much interest in hygeine. I’m not bashing computer nerds here either, I happen to be one, to a certain extent, and I go to school with many many computer nerds.
overzealousness aside, he still needs to wash himself.
“If you want to make an apple pie from scratch,
you must first invent the Universe” - Carl Sagan
Ugh. I went to school with a guy that you could smell a hallway away. I didn’t have a class with him, but you could sure tell when he was approaching.
I really felt sorry for the people who did have a class with him, and wondered if he had some kind of medical condition, or if he really didn’t care or notice.
I watched Planet of the Apes sitting next to some one with a certain lack of personal freshness. Whenever the apes went on about “stinking humans” I mentaly went “right on”.
There was a kid in my high school class who had a BO problem so bad, his parents couldn’t sell their house. It was a medical problem. Turned out his body did not produce a particular enzyme that broke down a certain chemical in foods…
OTOH, I worked at parts shop, and a service man who came in regularly just plain stunk. I would see him on Saturday and he would reek. he would be waiting for me open up Monday morning, and he would reek wearing the same shirt he reeked in Saturday!
I took a college course one summer. Summers, in Oklahoma, are pretty steaming hot. This was a July course. The class was at 2:30, which is the hottest possible part of the day. I had a job on the other side of town, no car, and a 30 minute bike ride between the job and the class. (Also about 45 minutes’ time between the job ending and the class starting.) The class was necessary to keep my scholarship; attending it every day was necessary to passing the class; going to work every day was necessary to ensure my continued eating and paying my rent.
Unfortunately, in the weather that year, simply walking from the parking lot to the class could cause one to break a sweat. Despite the fact that I showered every single day, and always wore deodorant, by the time I got to class 6 hours after my first shower of the day, I reeked. Yeah, it was fresh sweat, but still. I was miserably uncomfortable and self-conscious about it, which caused me to be unconscionably rude to the pampered sorority member who snidely suggested that I take a shower. (Looking back, she may not have been that rude, but her dad was in the athletic department, so she used his permit to park ten feet from the door in the faculty lot. No, she did NOT break a sweat getting to class.)
Maybe the geekling who was offending your nose so was one of the folk who live without air conditioning or hot water in a nasty apartment by the railroad tracks, eating ramen so they can pay their tuition. Maybe not, maybe he was just a thoughtless jerk with no social acumen who thought he was too good to shower just for class. And yeah, sitting in a crowded lecture hall less than a foot from someone does make it rough to ignore their BO; but is that their fault, or the fault of the freakin’ idiot who decided that we should pay good money to be packed in like cattle for a couple dozen lectures every semester?
Not that I blame you, really. Avoidable reek really bugs me, too. Just…if you don’t know this guy, how do you know he hasn’t been working as a roofer or painter to pay his tuition?
There was some guy in my linguistics class who used to use aftershave instead of deodorant. He’d walk into the evening class, haul out the bottle, then wipe some into the armpits of his shirt.
I work with a guy who wears something on monday, then wears the same clothes all week long, straight thru till friday. He does change every week, but it’s the same clothes all week long. He also rides his bike to work all summer long, wearing his work clothes. We had a few days in the 90’s this year and he goes staight from bike to office! If you have to meet with him, you always schedule it in the beginning of the week, or pay the price.
This girl on my cross country team has the worst-smelling sweat. It’s putrid. To make it even worse, she wears the same sports bra and shorts every day. Most people have figured out that running for an hour every day in 95+ F heat is going to make you sweat (and therefore stink), but I suppose she hasn’t.
There was a girl in my 5th grade class who stank exactly like the XC girl. When she’d come in from recess (which was spent running around the whole time), people would say, “I smell Yassah!” Mean, but true. She was really ripe.
A passing observation:
If the offending computer geek is as generally unkempt as you say, it is possible that he suffers from a mental illness. Unfortunately, depression runs rampant in college. Also, the college years are the most frequent time for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder to manifest themselves. No cite, sorry (I’m on the way out, and shouldn’t even be posting this!) but trust me, people who have mental illness frequently have trouble keeping up with their hygiene. No, I am not trying to offend anyone. But being a person who has had a wee bit of experience with (ahem) “affective disorders” myself, I can say that even ordinarily tidy individuals can completely lose the ability to care for themselves properly when depressed or otherwise messed up mentally. I am sorry you had to deal with the guy, but he may be more to be pitied than anything else.
An alternate scenario: he may have been “raised by wolves,” so to speak. My niece was raised by her drug addled mother. When she was returned to her father (thank god!) by Child Protective Services at the age of 12, she had absolutely NO idea how to keep herself clean. Since she had reached puberty, you can imagine how disgusting things could get! Fortunately, two years later, she is doing great and takes great pride in her appearance (and her smell, presumably).
I’m not trying to start anything, but I’m a little offended. I don’t stink, but I’ve dated some guys who were not the sweetest smelling guys. I dealed with it. There are more important things in life to worry about. They treated me so lovely, but smelled like B.O. Gee, like thats a huge thing. How long ago was deoderant invented? People got along fine without it for millions of years. If someone you sit next to you and you don’t like it, then get up and move. Or bring some kind of perfumy spray with you. If you smell something bad, spray yourself enough so that you only smell you. =D
Not to cast doubt on your character, but for the Love of God, why??? It’s not too much to ask that someone conform to the contempoary standards of hygiene. Why put up with that?
For me, B.O. is not a HUUUGE deal to me. The guys were nice. They treated me like a queen. I mentioned to them about their smell, the treated it like it was nothing. To me, its hardly nothing. There’s more important things in life than the way you smell.
If I had previewed, maybe I would have caught that. But alas, another thing not that important to me.