I've been subjected to a lot of bad smells in my life.
I worked in a microbiology lab for a while, purposefully growing smelly things. I swabbed pus and fecal specimens onto petri dishes. That was stinky.
I've spent time downwind of rotting corn husks in the Sweet Corn Capitol of the World. Disgusting.
I cloth diapered my kids. I poured sack-fulls of dirty diapers that had been festering for days into the washing machine. They did not smell like roses.
And still, nothing could have prepared me for the stench I came upon in my laundry room last night. It made me woozy. I had to shut the door and walk away, for fear of adding vomit to the smell.
The culprit? ONE single piece of clothing.
(This is where you praise Jesus that scratch-and-sniff computer screen technology is sorely lacking in development. Otherwise you'd be this shade of green right now.)
A hockey jersey, to be exact.
A hockey jersey that hasn't been washed for an entire hockey season. A jersey that has been drenched in man sweat time and time again, only to be wadded up, damp and stinky, for a week-long incubation in a dark hockey bag.
I think a small woodland creature could have crawled into Mike's hockey bag and died in there and it wouldn't smell as bad as this jersey. I think Mike could have taken a dump on the laundry room floor and let it sit there for a couple of days and it wouldn't damage my olfactory nerves they way this jersey did.
It's still sitting up there, behind closed laundry room doors. I'm about to wash it, but not before I locate a gas mask and some tongs. If I don't make it out alive, it's been nice knowing you.
What is it about hockey gear that makes it smell so awful? Everyone I know who plays hockey, or lives with someone who does, has this same lament. Do you make him keep his pads in the garage? That’s what other women I know do to their husbands.
At least it’s not college where I kept it in my locker at the rink for 9 months straight. It was fun putting on wet equipment every day
How you don't come down with some nasty skin infection I'll never know . . . must be all that tiger blood.
ew! I think you need a new rule where Mike launders his own sports gear, before it starts rotting. 🙂
He usually does, but I was out last night and there were things in the washer. He's a little gun shy about moving things to the dryer since he's ruined a few things before that couldn't be dried. He's soaked some of the equipment in the bathtub before, and you should see the water after he's done. I bet there are cleaner toxic dump sites out there.
Oh yeah, the stuff only comes in our house to be washed. Otherwise it's festering in the garage or his truck. For whatever reason, it seems to be uncool for hockey players to wash their jerseys and whatnot after every use. The combo of sweat and wadding up the stuff so it never really dries is pretty lethal.