It was Friday.

I had just gotten on the bus to journey home to celebrate the weekend.

As I settled myself into my seat, I was accosted by that smell. My sinuses began to burn and my eyes began to water. I scanned the bus for the source of the nauseating aroma, and to my ultimate displeasure, my eyes rested upon a couple of “Phish heads.”

“Phish heads, hippies, tree huggers” are all familiar to the general public.

It is not their individuality, political statements, eye-blinding tie-dye, dredlocks or even hemp jewelry which attracts attention to them.

It is the smell — week-old body odor, stale resin, and the inevitable patchoulli.

For those who don’t know what patchoulli is, it is what “Phish heads” use to “mask” their odor.

For the most part it does “mask” the stench of one who hasn’t showered in a few weeks in honor of the “show” they caught last month.

It seems they feel patchoulli even has the power to “mask” the fact that they [the women] haven’t shaved in years.

Even though patchoulli may “mask” the original odor, it replaces it with one even more horrible — more horrible than a sewer plant, worse than pure butyric or caproic acid (puke and cat shit), even worse than people who chose not to “violate the temple” by wearing deodorant at all.

They stink, and once more, they give stoners a bad name!

Why don’t you take a fucking bath?

Why must you deviants torture everyone else with your noxious odor?

Self expression is one thing, but this is ridiculous. You don’t have to offend or knock out everyone you walk by.

And another thing, you’re not “cool” when you get high and twirl around to those repetitive jam sessions.

Even your precious little, hairy, unkempt band is overwhelmed sometimes.

If I made as much money as Phish, I could afford a bar of soap and a haircut.

At a Phish show in Colorado, the band was overcome by the fumes, they collapsed on stage due to what doctors said was an overabundance of body odor, pot smoke and patchoulli oil.

They were rushed to intensive care once they could be maneuvered from the rioting mass of rotting flesh.

When Anastasio came to, he said, “We appreciate the candlelight vigil and the chanting and all that, but the doctors all agree: We cannot hope to revive the rest of the guys unless we can somehow isolate them from the deadly column of vapors rising from the crowd.”

“The skin is the part under the arm that makes contact with the soap,” he sang to the crowd.

“The soap is the bar that you use in the bath at your abode,” he continued.

So please, if you won’t listen to me, or even take a hint from all the grimaces in your vicinity, then listen to the men you love so much.

Please take a bath and if you still feel the need to “mask” an odor, try deodorant. Thank you.

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Kelli L Kenniker

Junior

Zoology and English