Words have always had a way of getting the best of me. I’ve never known the difference between “affect” and “effect” and I refuse to believe that “bemused” and “amused” don’t mean the same thing. In short, I’ve always been just one verbal misstep away from my own downfall.
However, none of my previous faux pas could have prepared me for the utter humiliation I’d experience after approaching an employee at my local mall and asking them what their favorite flavor of lotion was.
That’s right, I accidentally called a scent a flavor and now the Bed, Bath, and Beyond people think that I actually eat the lotion.
You know when you say something and you know almost immediately that it was wrong? Well, not me. It took the employee being like, “Wait, what did you just say?” for me to even realize that I might have misspoken. Then, it wasn’t until after they’d told me their favorite scent was A Thousand Wishes and I’d already left the store that I even considered that “scent” and “flavor” might not mean the same thing.
I’d never wanted to be further away from somewhere than I did at that moment. Or, is it “farther”? Oh god, it’s happening again.
All I wanted to do was get the employee’s opinion on the flavors – I mean scents – of the lotions, not to make myself out to be some Japanese-Cherry-Blossom-gobbling lunatic. They’re probably in the back room of Bed, Bath, and Beyond right now, laughing at the girl who eats the lotions. “What a freak” they’re probably saying, “I bet she nibbles the candles, too.”
I want to make one thing very clear: I don’t eat the lotions. I use them to moisturize my skin and to smell like fucking warm vanilla sugar and that’s it! I mean, okay, maybe I’ve chanced a lick once or twice. It’s warm vanilla sugar! Of course I wanted to know what it tasted like – I’m only human! We’ve all done it. Right? Like, we’ve all taken five or six experimental licks of our wet-sugar-goo slathered skin just to see what would come of it? It’s natural. But I absolutely do not eat the candles. The texture’s all wrong.
At this point, there’s no way I can show my face in that Bed, Bath, and Beyond again, and I’m left wondering two things: Where am I going to get lotion that makes me smell like a thousand wishes now? And how will I ever find out what a thousand wishes tastes like?
