The Stink

When Aubrey and I moved into our new house, one of the things we noticed in our first couple weeks was that sometimes when we got stepped out of our cars to come into the house there was a smell that absolutely reeked.

Now sometimes we get good smells, because we are 30 yards from a McD’s. Sometimes we can smell their breakfast, which is pretty nice.

But sometimes we can smell a serious stink. At first we thought it might be the garbage from the daycare center behind the McD’s. Maybe it was the smell of a compilation of dirty diapers. I imagine that is one compilation that wouldn’t produce a great smell. Then we remembered Spring Grove. Spring Grove has a paper mill which produces a smell not unlike cow butt. And so we asked our neighbor what they thought the smell was. They said it was most likely Spring Grove.

When there’s a stink, you want to know where it’s coming from. You don’t just ignore it. You smell it, your nose cringes and your face scrunches up like you have to sneeze or something.

So every time we got out of the car and smelled the stank, we would think, “Geez, that stupid paper mill.”

One of those days that we got out of the car and smelled the stank, Aubrey looked down and you know what she saw?

She saw the top of a sewage line (what’s the word for it?), which was broken off. And the smell was coming from it.

The whole time we thought the smell was coming from Spring Grove, but really it was coming from our own yard. It was our stink.

I think sometimes we can sense when something is wrong and often we attribute it to other people, when in reality the problem is our own.

Think about bitterness. We think that everybody is making our life hard, when in reality, maybe it’s me.

Think about anger. We think that everybody is screwing up, when in reality there’s something inside of me that is making me so unhappy and angry.