What the Funk?

I-4. Wekiva Springs. 70 miles an hour. Rain storm.

We looked at each other, eyes bugging out and watering, in four-alarm panic as the stink permeated the confines of my small rice-burner car. This was an aroma like no other we had ever encountered.

It beat the smashed skunk we rolled over and pasted to the undercarriage a few years back. Had to sacrifice a spatula from the kitchen and slide in under the car nauseatingly close to the splattered remains to scrape bits of that critter off the axle.

It far outpaced the stench we created by storing used cat litter in a sealed can until it was “full enough” to dispose of on the curb. My idea, I admit it. Not a good one, but impressive to all who encountered it.

This reek outdistanced in sheer back-of-throat-gag-impact of the dead deer carcass someone threw in our neighbor’s yard a few Christmases back. It looked like some darkly gothic Christmas gift, all festooned with vultures picking away. They stripped it in an hour. Nature’s garbage disposers are efficient…

This noisome odor shattered the puke-inducing record of my parent’s refrigerator when it ceased to be cool and croaked in a spectacular way with a few bags of my brother’s fish bait inside during the heat wave a few summers back. Cleaning that up, I looked like a deranged Bedouin with kitchen towels wrapped around my head and swim goggles on my eyes to ward off the visible fumes created by maggot-infested bait fish and Eggo waffles.

It actually beat the famous acidic cloud of funk my son can create after incubating Hormel Chili with Beans somewhere in his lower intestines overnight.  Pulling the lid off a can of that is like pulling the pin on a stink grenade!  We hear the "click! shuraack!" of the can opening in the kitchen and make plans to evacuate! T-minus a few scant hours until emission. Best to be out of the house or suffer the indignities of the hi-larious "chase mom until cornered, lift a leg and attempt to alter her olfactory reality" game.

But, as usual, the origin of the fetid miasma gassing us to unconsciousness in my car was a mystery. No one in their right mind would cop to this!

“Mom! What IS that?” she said.  Here it was...my stunningly beautiful blonde daughter glowing with good health and looking adorably quirky, her hair pulled back in her signature Tinkerbell-on-crack soccer hairdo, had removed her soccer cleats. A pervasive layer of tangy aroma wafted past. She then rolled down her soccer socks in preparation to un-velcro her shin guards. Another thick yet piquant odor pancaked down on the first aroma enthusiastically arousing my gag reflex and bringing water to my eyes. And to seal the fruity yet feisty vintage of this bacterial bacchanal, her soccer backpack, oozing with used soccer uniforms, spare cleats and more socks, gaped open next to her like an alien mouth orifice emitting what looked like its own exhalations.  A primeval perfume, it possessed three distinct notes:  Tangy, piquant and hideously vomitous.


The windows fogged in a sheen of toxic condensation. The air conditioner gasped and recoiled.  I pulled over.

Dr. Frankenstein said it best: “It’s ALIVE!”

The Supreme Soccer Stench trumps all. It came from the most unexpected place. It symbiotically set up its own  unique bio-system in my daughter’s soccer bag, home of vinyl cleats and polyester socks and sweat under cover of darkness and in perfect camouflage. And, it competes with similiar demon spawn in every other soccer bag toted around by the team according to reports from reliable sources (parents).

The bag goes in the trunk now.