I smell progress . . .

Last night I officially joined the 21st century when I bought my first flip phone. Yes, yes, I know how incredibly behind the times I am. I'm like that. Slow and steady, dear readers. But the phone that I've had for several months was beginning to show signs of fatigue in the form of minor malfunctions, so I decided to embrace technology (although it's certainly not an iPhone) and this is my new phone. And I'm still well off the pace of most phones, since I opted to go with one that doesn't even have a camera, but it's still quite an upgrade from my previous phones. And it was only 30 bucks. I do like a bargain.

For the most part, I'm pretty pleased with my new MARBL (it even has a cool name), although I've always preferred the one-piece phones that don't flip, so that's going to take some getting used to.

The friendly sales associate in the technology department at Target was very helpful in my decision to buy this phone over some of the other models. However, I must tell you that he did not smell good. Not at all. He was dirty and smelly. He had obviously not showered in a couple of days, and his deodorant had given out on him sometime on Sunday, I would guess. He had long fingernails with dirt under them. He was a swell fellow, but I could smell him coming and going, and when I stood next to him, it was downright oppressive.

When I left the store and drove away, I sat at a light with the smell still swirling around my olfactory cavities, so I cranked the AC in an effort to get the stench out of my system. That seemed to work, but I couldn't help thinking to myself, how does a person get to be so stinky at a nice, clean store like Target without their co-workers and managers saying something to them? It's not like the deodorant aisle is that far from the technology department. He even could have bought a little sample-sized Speed Stick for under a dollar and slapped some of that (maybe all of that) under those puppies. Wow.