Magical Hallway of Wonders

I live in an apartment building. I'm not sure if this is a common phenomena or not, but every time I walk down the hall, I'm bombarded by interesting smells from behind every door.

They're very rarely pleasant smells and only the weed is recurring. Every time I pass by my neighbours, it's like a fun little guessing game, "Name That Smell'.

Fortunately, I've been given the gift of scent and within a short while I can usually pinpoint exactly what something smells like. And it's usually gross. And often announced when everyone is mid-bite. I remember once I went to an Indian restaurant and I wasn't very familiar with anything beyond the usual chicken, potatoes and vegetables. I was with my whole family and I was probably about 12 years old. We were seated and everyone but me was excited to be sampling from a foreign culture.

I tried to be a good sport at first. I sniffed the food, trying to enjoy the aroma. I may have gagged. Then I started tasting the odd thing. And then it hit me. I knew exactly what this tasted like! I was so excited to discover this that I loudly announced it to everyone:

No one else shared my enthusiasm. They just slowly chewed their food and stared somewhat shocked. But they knew I was right. And because I was right, I'd ruined the meal for everyone. I didn't eat much of the food and no one else did either. That may have been the last time we went to eat somewhere exotic as a family.

So now, when I walk down that hallway, I can put this talent that no one but me appreciates to use.

Ravel thinks I'm cool

I am a volunteer on campus for a peer counseling group and today we had our monthly training session. The organization is structured into teams. All the volunteers are broken down into several small teams which meet weekly and then the leaders of each team form their own team that also meets weekly and then once a month we all meet together for trainings. Therefore, volunteers who aren't in your team are only ever seen once a month and at those monthly meetings, very little interaction is involved.

As additional background info, I'm fairly social-phobic and find it quite difficult to go up and talk to people. At one of the breaks in the training, I went to go get a coffee and was standing there fixing my coffee while a fellow volunteer did the same. The employees at the Tim Horton's had a radio player which happened to be playing the classical song 'Bolero'. I decided that could be my excuse to start a conversation, so I said 'It's been a while since I heard this song *pause*....Bolero.' The volunteer looked at me a little shocked, politely smiling and tried to listen. She didn't know the song. I'd assumed it was one of those classical songs that everyone comes across in elementary music class but apparently not so.

I tried to recover and explain that I'm not like a classical music aficionado or anything. So I said that I'd seen it played in concert at the NAC. I was in music class. It's a good piece. Very famous. You can't dance to it but it's pretty good.

The more I said, the worse things got until I noticed that she had already started walking away from me and started talking to other people, occasionally turning back if I said something she felt obligated to respond to.

At one time I would have been reduced to tears and sent into a downward spiral of self-hatred and depression. And the spiral did begin. However, during the next break, I decided to turn it into an amusing anecdote to tell to a completely different volunteer. Somehow discussing a time when you behaved very awkwardly leaves people gutting themselves laughing where the actual incident will leave people confused and uneasy.

Funny how that works.