The BO Pillow

I think it’s about time I shared this story…

A few months back, my friend Elizabeth and I attended a conference and shared a hotel room together.  This was the first time we were roomies, and we were hoping for an agreeable experience.   We arrived around the same time, checked in and headed up to our room to relax before jumping into the whole event.

At some point in all of this, I was sitting on my bed when I got a whiff of some unpleasant odor.  It smelled a little like body odor, so I did a quick sniff of myself to make sure it wasn’t coming from me.  I had worked all morning, and then spent 4 hours in a car…. anyways, it wasn’t me, and so I passed it off as my imagination.

Here’s where I went wrong.  I should know by now to trust my sniffer.  I have a keen sense of smell, and can often be caught sniffing the air – not unlike a dog does when it catches the scent of the unknown.  I blame it all on my father – who does the same thing.  Like father, like daughter.

OK – back to the story.  Our second day there, Elizabeth and I spent some time in our room working on blog posts, reading, and what have you.  And I caught the smell again.  This time it was stronger, but I couldn’t pin-point the origin.  It came and went, and I continued on as if all was right with the world.

But it wasn’t.

Something was lurking in our hotel room.  A terrible odor, that would cause much disgust and laughter.

At bed time, I finally crawled under the covers and buried my head in the pillows.  This was probably not the best idea, but how was I to know that the one of my pillows would smell strongly of BO?  I immediately popped up and spoke with renewed confidence that something was indeed stinking up the place.  I sniffed each pillow carefully.  On the 2nd one I thought I smelled it and did what any good friend would do.  I passed it to Elizabeth, who at this point thought I was misguided.  (My nose was so full of the smell that I had to rely on her judgement.)

Negative.

Moving on, I sniffed pillows three and four.  And that’s when it hit me – full on in the face.

I was overcome by the stench.  I was on the verge of passing out.

But I wanted to be sure, so I passed this one to Elizabeth too.

I imagine she didn’t actually think there was something that smelled this terrible.  She probably thought I was crazy, so she went ahead and stuck her nose into the pillow.  It’s hard to truly recreate with words what happened, but she immediately gagged and instinctively flung the pillow across the room!  (It was quite hilarious!)

The pillow fell onto my foot, and reflexes kicked in.  The pillow again took flight and landed on the floor at the foot of my bed.

We convulsed into a fit of giggles at the stench, and I asked through gasps of air, “Where could that possibly have been?” Was it the pillow case or the pillow itself?  I suppose I will never know, but I sure wasn’t going to sleep with that thing again.  The following morning, before we headed out for our day of sessions, I left a note for housekeeping:

This pillow smells of Body Odor.
It should be washed or thrown away.

Upon our return, the pillow was gone, and the remaining pillows smelled laundry fresh.

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