September 8 , 2004

Daily Post - Athenian

Dad eyes odor eliminator to end smell of teen spirit

Peter McKay

As a respected expert on the American family, I am often provided with the first word on new products for your home. These come in the form of e-mail press releases about new products that will change the lives of Americans forever. Occasionally a product comes along that sparks my interest.

Among the latest was a press release for Petrotech Odor Eliminator; a new product that promises to immediately eliminate odors from “hydrocarbon-based substance(s) such as animal and people urine and feces, skunk spray, smoke, seat and food odors.” The product works, the release claims, because it “shears the hydrocarbon chain [of the odor source] and then encapsulates the odor source.

I am planning on buying a case of Petrotech Odor Eliminator; as our house is full of hydrocarbon-based substances. (I am, in fact, something of a hydrocarbon-based substance myself but plan on using gloves whenever I spray the stuff for fear of being sheared, encapsulated or eliminated.) I’m not sure whether the stuff works — but I have a house with three boys, and I am willing to give it a try.

My oldest son uses so much cologne that he trails visible streams of scent, sort of like Pepe Le Pew in a soccer shirt. He claimed he uses cologne because of his job at a local museum, where he spends much of his day working with middle school kids who, he says smell like “stale Wendy’s.”

When I questioned him, he explaine4d that French fries, wh4en cold, reek of stale grease, and most middle-schoolers are, in his words, “greasy little things.” I could solve the problem with one or two spritzes of the new wonder spray.

My youngest son, not yet in middle school, does not smell all that much. But he has a nose so sensitive that he becomes violently ill at the slightest unpleasant aroma. A few years ago, we took him to the fish market, where I noticed only the scents of the sea and the open air. He immediately turned green at the aroma of fresh fish and within minutes was holding his nose and making urgent motions that he had to exit, stage right. Before I could get him to the door; he was spouting higher and farther than Moby Dick. I plan on buying him a bottle of the wonder chemical to use as he wishes.

The worst, however, is our family dog, which smells bad on a good day. When it rains his wet-dog smell wafts through the house in the cloudy shape of a robed figure with a sickle. A bottle or two might do him some good.

I also ought to order at least one bottle for myself. Last week, I cam home from work to be greeted by my 8-year old daughter. When I leaned over to kiss her, she pulled back, a pained expression on her face.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Nothing,” she said, wincing. “Just that gross ‘Dad’ smell you get sometimes!”

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