accidental feminist

I am not one to use the term “TMI” lightly, or, really, at all, but this may actually be a case when the phrase is decidedly apt. Not because the following information reveals too much about my private life, but because it is a truth which, before one experiences one simply does not believe, and, after one experiences, one wonders whether one should share it with others. So…proceed with caution, AFers, and be warned that the following story is scatological in nature (not to be confused with eschatological, although you might feel that the world is ending when you read what I have to say).

I am talking, of course, of the “baby diaper” phenomenon in wine tasting. Supposedly, “baby diaper” is a real wine tasting term, meant to describe a sort of flowery, powdery aroma: a baby diaper before it is, you know, used by the baby.

But I had a wine the other night, the aroma of which puzzled me. It was generally good, but it had this, well, sort of brassy, basic (and I mean, like, litmus paper “basic”) tang to it. What is that undertone? I asked myself. What is it? Then it struck me…like going in to check on a three month old in the middle of the night only to find she’s dropped a #2. This wine had the distinct undertone of a baby diaper…but not the kind that’s fresh out of the pack.

Now, for all you parents out there, you can vouche for me here: #2’s from babies who are exclusively nursed do NOT smell like poop. They smell weird, for sure, but they’re not the gross smell that you get when you mash up a bunch of different kinds of plant and animal bi-products and send ‘em through a digestive system. And believe me, any parent who breast-fed and can remember that sad day when their baby did his/her first “business” that involved actual food. Because before that, you’re thinking, “Eh, diaper changing isn’t so bad. I can do this whole parent thing”, and then your 6 month old has some chicken soup at dinner and two hours later you’re saying “Get me OUT! Hire a NANNY! I did NOT sign up for THIS!”

And this is what suddenly occurred to me as I drank this wine. The wine was good, overall, but, really, I couldn’t shake the similarity of the aromas in my mind, and therefore had trouble drinking it. It was not unlike the experience that Marissa and I had in New Orleans (I will say no more on this. If you are reading this and you know Marissa, ask her; she will know what I am talking about).

I’m sure we all have our stories of disconcerting aromas that made an otherwise good tasting food, or good smelling plant, etc. simply…unpleasant. In Brookline, for example, we have trees that smell like poop when they bloom in the spring. POOP! Right outside our building! Horrible! Poop, I tell you!

Oh, Mother Nature, has the recession forced you to cut-back on unique scent-production, leading you to reappropriate otherwise proprietary aromas? And if so, couldn’t you just use a nice, ubiquitous “citrus” scent? Everything smells good when it smells like an orange…