Actually, I will be referring to vegetable trays in particular, but it might as well be called ‘salad’. Besides, “salad sucks” is just fucking poetic.
So, last night I volunteered to bring a vegetable tray to a student art exhibit at a local coffee shop. One of my student’s art pieces was featured, and the coffee shop in question has amazing chai. No, I did not only go for the syrupy, cinnamon-y sweet chai. Well, kinda I did. Sorry not sorry.
Anyway.
I picked up a tray at a local grocery store, because ain’t nobody have time to wash and cup up numerous kinds of vegetables (except my mom. She will spend hours preparing a beautiful vegetable tray that just gets decimated in minutes. No thanks).
I was careful to choose the prettiest, freshest looking tray that wasn’t $1,000.
When I arrived at the coffee shop, our beautiful, sweet, thoughtful art teacher gratefully accepted my store-bought tray of health and placed it on the counter.
At this point, I went to get my chai. While I stood waiting, our school dean came in. As we stood making small talk, I suddenly smelled ass. Like, rotten-pumpkin-left-in-a-hot-dumpster-ass.
OMIGAWD. The dean just cut ass right next to me.
It’s permeating my delicate, virgin nostril skin.
It burns.
It was so bad, I had to move away, using the excuse that you have to pick your drink up on the far opposite side of the room.
But, the smell was over there, too. For a moment, I was worried maybe he had had an accident. I was momentarily quite embarrassed for him.
Wait, the smell is worse over here. So, much worse *gag*. It is worse over here, by.the.tray.
My $100 vegetable tray smelled like hot farts.
I looked around at the others in the room. Could they smell it?
Of course they could fucking smell it, you noob. Someone with no sense of fucking smell could smell it.
I was immediately self-conscious.
People are judging me. The art teacher is judging me. She is thinking, “Why would this idiot girl bring the smell of death into my event?”
Then, I couldn’t decide what to do. From the other side of the room, with my nose inside my shirt, I tried to decipher if the vegetables were rotting. From feet away, they looked fine. Perfectly fine. Right?
I contemplated asking the art teacher if she noticed the fart smell, and if she thought everything was a-OK, but I was feeling incredibly self-conscious. I wanted to continue pretending that my vegetables were not enveloping the fresh air in the room with the smell of dying asshole.
Eventually, the smell dissipated and surprisingly, the veggie tray was eaten completely.
Then, I freaked.
What if it was bad? What if people died? What if it’s my fault?
When I got home, I messaged the art teacher and asked her if she smelled farts. She thought I was silly, and said the vegetables tasted great.
Still, I spent an hour googling, “Is broccoli supposed to smell like farts?”
Cupcakes would never have smelled like farts. Never.
