Maybe I’m not that strange afterall.

Or maybe I am?

Okay, do you remember Mary Katherine Gallagher on SNL? When she’d get nervous, she’d put her hands in her armpits and then smell her hands.

I don’t do that.

Let me step back for a second.

I have an incredibly good sense of smell. I can’t eat in restaurants where the tables smell like dirty sponges. I can’t bear the smell of a fish market. I’d rather die than eat bleu cheese.

Well, maybe not really die. But please don’t make me.

I can smell the boys’ shoes from a different floor of the house.

And I have always, for as long as I can remember, smelled my hands.

I put my pinkies together and put my hands over my nose and mouth and I smell them. (And that, Melissa, is probably why I hate your soap. Sorry.)

I know it’s odd. In fact, I’ve learned to be extremely discreet about it over the years.

I’ve even cut back.

And yet, it is a reoccuring occurance.

Bet you’ve never seen me do it. (Andrew, I’m not talking about you here.) Yup, just like that sneaky alcoholic who no one ever sees drinking.

There is no Hand Smelling Anonymous group that I know about. Do you? And anyway, where do you think this came from anyway. It’s genetic. Or at least environmental. I’m just too polite to tell you from whom this was passed down.

But today, in the midst of a good, calming smell, I came to a revelation. The hand-smelling reminds me of something. Something soothing. A happy place. Calm. Collected.

Oh wait!

It makes me feel just like I did when I had that Aromatherapy Facial with Reiki at the Spa in St. Michael’s.

The scent. The energy from the hands. The warmth.

Maybe I’m on to something and maybe I’m not that strange afterall.