A Conversation That Stinks

Photo credit: cyano66

We rarely go for long walks anymore: usually, it's a brief walk around the three streets that make a circuit around our own. It's a 15-minute jaunt that DW and I take at the start of our lunch break, before we make something to eat.

Conversations are usually about the pandemic, about the government, about politics, and about current affairs. Sometimes, we talk about future plans: where we want to go and what we'd like to do once the pandemic has ended. Or where we might want to end up living when the kids have left the house for good.

Rarely do we talk about silly nonsense, but that changed on yesterday's walk.

DW: "Last night, on my walk" (sidenote: DW has resolved to reach 10,000 steps a day and often goes for evening walks to attain that goal) "I passed a house and I could smell weed."

Me: "Somebody on his or her front steps, blazing up one?"

DW: "I think so. I didn't see the person. Anyway, it got me thinking: if I can smell the weed, does that mean I'm inhaling that person's particulates?"

Me: "From exhaling? Good point."

DW: "I know, right? This is why we need to wear a mask when we're outside."

Neither of us were wearing masks, by the way.

DW: "Somebody that I work with used to keep track of the people that he saw in the bathroom who wouldn't wash their hands after coming out of a stall."

Me: "What, did he publish the list for all to see, to shame those offenders?"

DW: "No, but I remember having a strange conversation with him, where he said, 'If you're sitting in a stall, next to someone, and you can smell their shit...'"

Me: "...Are you breathing in their fecal matter?"

DW: "YES!!"

Me: "I had a similar conversation with <a former friend> years ago." (This person, by the way, was a germaphobe.) "We were talking about all of the foul smells we breathe in and how we inhale some nasty particulates. At one time I said to him: 'You know, if someone farts and you can smell it, you're breathing in their shit.' His eyes grew to that deer-in-the-headlight look and he went silent."

DW: "Oh my God, you freaked him out, didn't you?"

Me: "Oh yeah, big time. I had to calm him by clarifying that those particulates were probably too small to carry anything that could harm him and that humans have evolved over millennia to handle breathing in other people's farts."

DW: "So, I'm safe." (She didn't really say that but I couldn't pass up a good punchline.)

DW (for reals): "But if I could smell a joint from a long way off, could COVID—particularly, this new, highly contagious strain—be carried to me?"

Me: "Like you said, we should be wearing our masks outside."

DW: "I should always have one on when I'm around you." (Again, she didn't say that, but I had to end this with another witty quip. CUE THE RIMSHOT!)