Christmas Fruits

Last weekend I was watching an episode of Mr. Bean where he went shopping. There was this scene where he walks into the perfume section and nearly suffocates because of the fumes. I’m not a big fan of Britain’s humor but I like Mr. Bean and his antics. I can actually relate to him suffocating from too much perfume.

I have a colleague who wears so much perfume we can still smell her fifteen minutes after she has left the room. At first I thought she must use a lot of perfume, like an entire bottle everyday. I was wrong. I went shopping for my Christmas gifts a few days ago and wandered to the perfume section. There were so many scents in the air that I felt a little light headed. There was a sales girl showing off a perfume to some women. She said one squirt of the stuff and the scent would last for three days. If used consistently, it wouldn’t even wash out. I was rude enough to ask her what I would have to do if I wanted to change my brand. Would I need to bleach my clothes? I don’t think perfume makes a very good Christmas gift.

In my opinion it says, ‘Here, you stink. Merry Christmas’. I visited all my usual stores, they get great stuff. Most of my widely complemented unique Christmas gifts come from them. I was done with the day’s Christmas holiday gift shopping by lunch. But I had been saving the time because I needed to look for a new store. It was for Christmas fruit baskets. I usually ordered them online but this time I had a coupon. Christmas gift baskets were a major part of my Christmas holiday gifts. They were what I usually gave at work. In fact we even sent them out as corporate gifts. It took me an entire thirty minutes to find the store. It was really pretty inside and they had so much more variety than I saw on the website. I redeemed my coupon and got a box of chocolate strawberries for free. On my way back to my car, I passed the perfume section again. I thought, ‘What the hell’ and bought the everlasting perfume for my colleague. She was delighted to receive it.