A week or so ago, my wife read a funny meme thing from the internet to me. (I’m still getting used to using “meme” in my vocabulary. Can’t we just call it a quip or a joke?) It read something like, “When I miss my parents, I put 12 expired salad dressings in my fridge, and it feels like home.”

The funny part was that the concept of the joke hits a little too close to home – our home. And I guess in order for it to be a funny meme, it applies to more than just my home.

Famously, at a Mother’s Day dinner a few years ago at our home, we had sour cream on the table that turned out to have a “best by date” of May 14th on it. That seemed reasonable – except for the fact that the year on the carton was for the year previous. Yep, it was year old sour cream. It had been hiding somewhere in the back of one of our refrigerators. (We have a fridge in the garage, as well as the kitchen)

Here’s the best part of the story. When I tasted the “aged” sour cream on my baked potato, I thought, “hmm, there’s a little bit of an extra kick to this sour cream,” but I ate it anyway. We all ate it actually, and we all lived. My son said, “sour cream is sour when you first buy it anyway, isn’t it?” After the discovery, I was reminded of a concept. Here’s the short explanation:

There are certain simple, folksy tests that we use in our speech and in our everyday living. One is the “duck test.” If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc. then, it’s a duck. For food, I use the “look test, smell test, and taste test.”

We’re focusing on the “smell test.” This test takes on at least two different forms. The first is figurative. For instance, let’s say that you have been approached by a guy who tells you that you can make a $100,000.00 in one year.

All you have to do is put up five thousand dollars as an investment in a gold mine in Uzbekistan. It’s a sure thing. And, by the way, the guy makes a point to tell you that he’s a “good church going church guy.”

If your nose is functioning properly, this proposed deal “smells fishy.” Therefore, it doesn’t pass the smell test. (By the way, I fell for that kind of deal years ago when my nose wasn’t working too well. But that’s a story for another day.)

The second “smell test” is literal. This is when you go to your food storage room and bring out a bottle of stewed tomatoes with a date of 2004 scrawled on the lid. You open the bottle and the contents are bubbling and belching.

You get close enough to get a whiff and detect that the odor just doesn’t seem right for stewed tomatoes. This is not the time to say, “Oh what the heck, let’s eat them and see what happens.” This is the time to say, “Hmm, even though 2004 was a good year, these tomatoes don’t pass the smell test.” And down the drain they go.

Years ago, I had a “smell test” that involved our dog. Sassy, the wonder Boxer, wanted to go outside at about 3:00 A.M. She seemed anxious, so I dragged myself up out of bed and opened the door for her. I knew as cold as it was, she’d be right back after she had done her “duties.”

When she came back in a few minutes, she didn’t pass the smell test. She had just had an encounter with “Pepe’ Le Pew.” (Remember the Looney Tunes cartoon skunk?) Holy Cow! — was she ever putrid with skunk odor! It makes my eyes water just to think of it now.

After being in the kitchen for a few seconds, I ushered her right back outside where she spent the rest of the night on her doghouse cable. I went back to bed for a restless rest of the night, subconsciously knowing the job that awaited me in the morning.

If you’ve never taken part in a post-skunk spraying decontamination procedure, you’re lucky. We’ve had dogs get sprayed a few times over the years.

And, one memorable time, I personally had the experience of being skunk sprayed in a minor league sort of way (if there’s such a thing as a minor skunking experience). I was a young man, out in the field at night changing irrigation water when that happened.

I also know first hand that it’s not a good idea to shoot a skunk while it’s in a nest box in the chicken coop. And while we’re at it, let me say that it’s never a good idea to drive over the top of a dead skunk in the road. It will take a while before the neighbors will forgive you for the odor your parked car brings to the area.

Anyway, the next morning after this particular dog skunking, I knew I had to “face the music.” I rolled up my sleeves for a marathon dog bath. I put Sassy in the tub and got the water running through the hose of the handheld showerhead.

The water ran for more than an hour. We went through tomato juice, special skunk odor remover, bar soap, dog shampoo and people shampoo – in that order. (I learned later that a combination of hydrogen peroxide, Dawn dish soap and baking soda is a better recipe for de-skunking.)

After toweling the dog off and blow-drying her, I sniffed the top of her head. It was the smell test. Relatively speaking, the odor wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good either.

A little later, one of my wife’s friends came to the door. She wouldn’t come into the house. Our home didn’t pass the smell test for her.

After a few days of opening windows during the warmer part of the day, burning a small fortune’s worth of scented holiday candles, and popping popcorn and baking cookies a time or two – the place almost seemed acceptable again.

I’m hoping for myself, and for all of Sanpete, that none of us will have any major smell test failures for a while – literally or figuratively. — Merrill

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