"I just picked her up from practice..." (and other excellent excuses)

This story still remains one of my favorite mom and me stories. I hope she doesn't mind if I use it but I was thinking about it tonight and I wanted to write about it.

Disclaimer: My nose is ALWAYS stuffy, so I can't smell anything, AND our neighbor has cats. (These facts are important, so keep them in mind as the story progresses.)

My freshman year I decided that if I wasn't ackward enough I would join the softball team as the stray 50 mile an hour aim dummy OR pitcher, your choice. I joined with a bunch of girls who couldn't play, but had the advantage of being large and in charge and therefore fit into no other catagory of sports. Though I was not particulary gifted at pitching I found ways of getting around that, but that is a different blog.

One day after practice mom picked me up for my doctors appointment. I had been running (away from the balls batted at me) and pitching and catching and had naturally gotten a bit sweaty. However, up until that day I had never smelled when I sweat and I chalk it up to good jeans and a little device called deoderant.

Well, I notice mom keeps sniffing and making faces but I don't think too much about it. When we get to the doctors office, mom is still sniffing, but has now added the line, "I just picked her up from practice" in an apologetic voice. Strange, I think, though softball is not the coolest sport one shouldn't have to apologize about it.

Enter doctors office. Small room, no window. Doctor so and so comes in and wears a pained expression, mom is wearing the similar expression. It is like a bad matching his and hers pained expression set. Obviously it doesn't come in the kids sizes because I do not smell what they are smelling. Again mom says, "I just picked her up from practice." Doctor-holds-his-beath nods in an understanding and slightly disgusted way. His face is also getting slightly red because of the tiny shallow breaths he is taking through his mouth in order to miss as much of the foul smell as possible.

Am I missing something?

Finally the doctors appointment is over, mom has explained a few more times that "I just picked her up from practice," and the doctor has informed his nurses to ban me from coming back to his office unless I am wearing a biohazard suit. When we reach the car my olfactory senses finally kick in and for the first time I notice a rancid, funky, unearthly smell.

"What is that?" I ask mom.
I can tell she doesn't know how to tell me that I reek like a rotten toilet.
"I smells like cat poop." I say.
It hits both of us like a rocket on turbo drive. She looks at her feet, where the bottom of her shoe is smeared with a dangerous amount of toxic, acidic cat turd that has probably eatten away some of the rubber on the soul of her shoe. Nice. I realize that now my doctor and all the nurses think I am a cursed and disgusting child. Even nicer.
"Call them when we get home and tell them you had poo on your shoe." I say threateningly. But it never happens, and forever after my doctor will tell the story of the grossest teenaged girl he ever met, the one who smelled like a rotten toilet and also tragically played softball. I'm surprised he didn't ask me to come have tests because anyone whose sweat smelled like "mine" must have been fatelly ill.

So thanks mom for that story, I laugh my head off when I think of it.