The Worst Smell of My Life
This is not a fairy tale to tell to your children.
The single worst smell I ever experienced occurred on August 18, 1994. If you smelled what I smelled, trust me, you'd remember the day.
I was a happy go lucky boy of 15. And by "happy go lucky" I mean completely miserable, ignorant of girls and deeply imbedded in my baseball card collection. We lived in suburban New Jersey and we had 2 german shepherds. These were not small dogs. One weighed about 105 and the other in the high 80's. This is important to our story.
Now, this particular August New Jersey day was special. You know those perfect summer days where it's 80 degrees out and there's a nice soft summer breeze that gently caresses your skin and all you want to do is be outside? This was the opposite kind of day. It was 117 fucking degrees outside. Humidity was about two thousand percent. It was so hot the mercury broke out of the window thermometer, stormed upstairs and fucked my dad in the ass. It was that hot.
Another key detail to this story is that tomorrow was garbage day. As such, certain chores needed doing. I remember my dad calling me from up in his room - he was in no condition to do anything - and insisting that I go outside and pick up the dog shit.
Going outside was bad enough. This was the kind of day you don't even want to turn the lights on. My mom spent the whole day sitting on the floor by an air conditioning vent sobbing into her hands.
But, chores had to be done and I was an obedient child and I loved our dogs - both of whom were laying on top of two other A/C vents in the house, preventing the cool air from circulating. They were smart dogs.
I opened the door to go outside. Now when you go outside on a day like this, it feels like there's no air to breathe. You just step into a wall of heat. Immediately, every pore on your skin sweats and you become instantly dehydrated.
I wanted to move fast and get this over with as soon as possible, but on days like this your body is incapable of moving quickly. It can't be done. And so I labored over to the pooper scooper and trudged slowly through the yard. It took my about 20 minutes to pick it all up, and it filled the scooper to its max. It was the worst kind of shit to pick up. It was like melting ice cream, just sort of sloshing around in the pooper scooper. If you've ever heard anybody complain of heat and say "it's hot enough to melt ----," trust me, it still probably isn't hot enough to melt dog shit. At any rate, I headed over the our poop bucket.
Our system for poop removal was pretty simple and I imagine somewhat commonplace among dog owners with yards. We dump the poop in a garbage bag inside a bucket. When the bag is full, we throw it out on garbage day. Bingo bango. Unfortunately, there were 2 flaws in our system. The first was that the bucket of poop was kept on the side of the shed that was in direct sunlight all day long. The second was that the bucket was black.
Now I don't know exactly how much shit was in this bucket, but I do know that it was the day before garbage day and my wounded father had said the bag would be ready to go. So figure about 2-3 weeks worth of German Shepherd shit. High protein diet German Shepherd shit.
As I approached the bucket, I noticed that on the ground all around it were dead flies. This was not a good sign. I reached out to remove the lid and it burned my hand. I jumped back and squealed in pain. I thought for a minute about how hot it must be in that bucket. Conservative estimates put the temp in the 225-270 range. Essentially, this bucket was an oven, and for the last 3 weeks, it had been cooking like 5 pounds of dog shit.
My plan was to hold my breath, knock the lid off the bucket, dump the poop in and run away across the yard. There I would regroup and come back, holding my breath long enough to get the bag inside the bucket tied. From there, it would be easy.
The last clear thought I can remember having as I leaned down to knock the lid off the bucket was: "This might not be good."
I kicked the lid off the bucket.
If you've ever seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I assume you have, then you'll know what I mean when I say that shapes came out of the bucket, like they did when the Ark was opened. These shapes came fast and they carried with them the single strongest and most impossibly vile smell I have ever smelled. It was an aggressive smell and and it forced itself into me. I refer to it as a smell but it was more than that, because it invaded all of my senses. In less than a second, this smell had shot up my nose, into my eyes and my ears. It forced open my mouth and charged down my throat. I could smell it. I could taste it. I could see it. I could feel it covering my body like the mirror in the Matrix after Neo takes the red pill. It grabbed hold of my balls and squeezed them.
I won't waste time describing the smell. It can't be done. People always try to describe bad smells by using other smells: "It smelled like month old chinese food, on a bed of burning hair on an indian guy's lap in the subway and a guy who just ate a pound of asparagus is trying to piss out the fire."
It doesn't work. There is no way to describe the smell because I've never smelled anything even remotely close to it before. You want to know what it smelled like? Take 5-6 pounds of dog shit and cook it in an unventilated oven for 2-3 weeks and then stick your head in there.
I remember I felt like I was being lifted off the ground. I heard a terrible gagging sound coming from my own throat - a sound I have failed to reproduce since, despite brief efforts - I shook violently, puked, shit myself and collapsed on the ground.
When I first came to, I saw my father moving towards me. He was speed walking, in that wide legged way that only people who've had mercury forced inside their asshole would understand. He didn't want to be moving, but seeing his son lifted from the ground by an invisible entity forced him into action. I was mostly out of it, but I remember seeing him swinging his harms violently as though he was being attacked by bees, then stoop to his knees to vomit. He waddled to the lid and tried to throw it back onto the bucket. It missed. He let out a string a profanity, some of which I hadn't even heard yet and to this day I don't really understand. I think he was speaking in tongues like those people pretend to in particularly crazy churches. Anyway, he ducked and covered his face with his arm, like he was walking into a strong wind. He grabbed the lid and slammed it back down on the bucket, threw up again and then collapsed in the grass.
When I came to, I was in a bathtub and my mom was stroking my head. She kept saying over and over "I don't understand. I just don't understand."
My dad came in, still waddling uncomfortably. His hair had turned white and his eyes were blood red. He and I had contracted what would eventually become 2 of the worst cases of pink eye in the history of New Jersey. "You don't need to understand," he said. He tried to wink at me, but his eyes had crusted over. He waddled off and yelled back "and get rid of all those Goddam thermometers."
posted by Tent Time at 1:45 AM
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