Over the weekend, we were at a local restaurant. One where you stand in line to order your food. Quite often I wind up in line either in front of or behind someone who is enveloped by a cloud of perfume. You can’t see it but it’s there. Because you can smell it when they’re about 4 feet from you. And it hangs around long after they pass you.

For some reason, their perfume is also the worst possible smelling stuff that can still be considered perfume. Or perhaps that’s just me. You see I long ago fell out of love with perfumes and fragrances. The fact that they gave me terrible, incapacitating migraines let me know that they wanted me to have nothing to do with them.

And I’m happy to oblige. Except when I’m forced to live in the cloud that is their perfume.

So, if I experience this often, why did this time make me sad?

Was it the fact that the woman had a little girl about 2 years old. And that she was forced to breathe this every day?

Was it the fact that she, her husband and her little girl always traveled in a car full of that sweet poison?

Both of those things made me sad. Even though they both can make me sad. That wasn’t the saddest part.

This is what made me sad: The woman appeared to be about 5 or 6 months pregnant. And it made me sad to think of her unborn baby, a child that hasn’t even taken its first breath, being exposed to all those chemicals from its mother’s perfume. So many of those chemicals are hormone disruptors and nervous system destroyers.

So sad.

Photo Courtesy Cameron Parkins via Flickr