Tuesday, April 26, 2011

The Hygiene Fairy

I happened to be at NorWesCon this weekend. For those of you not in the know, it’s a large fantasy/sci-fi/steampunk/art/fetish/gaming/costume/panel-y sort of convention. It’s more or less an ‘anything goes’ kind of affair, with the exceptions of live ammunition and public nudity.

NOTE: I’m quite sure there was a lot of private nudity. No, I didn’t actually see any, but I heard stories. Maybe next year.

On Friday afternoon at NorWesCon, I was idly standing in artist alley, looking through my schedule, when something tapped my leg. I looked down and saw a young girl of about 5 or 6 dressed in a fairy costume. She then handed me a small item and dashed off to (presumably) her mother, who was also dressed as a fairy. They then walked away.

Upon closer inspection, the item turned out to be a travel-sized bottle of mouthwash with a small sticker affixed that read ‘A Gift from the Hygiene Fairy’ on it. I thought it was rather cute until I realized that some woman had thought it necessary, nay imperative, that I use mouthwash.

I hadn’t even been breathing in her direction, so there must have been some sort of miasma of halitosis around me, a suffocating fog of vapor that forced all passersby to make a save versus breath weapon at -2.

So, despite my almost daily, semi-rigorous, bathing habits, I still managed to have breath that compared unfavorably with week-old road kill.

This leads to my next question: is it possible to die from eating too many breath mints? ‘Cause I’ve been eating them like candy since then and I’m getting a little light headed. I mean, it’s theoretically possible that I might talk to a girl at some point, so I have to be prepared. Maybe a mint every three minutes is too much.

Maybe every five?

Cheers,
-Jason

2 comments:

Ed said...

Sigh. I'd thought I'd left a message here before.

Summary: You can overdose on anything. Determining the LD50 of anything is left as an exercise for the stupid.

I've met a Hygiene Fairy before. She wasn't very discriminating to whom she gave gifts. Admittedly, she's probably not the same one, as the one I met seemed about the same age as you describe, and that was about eight years ago.

Jason Janicki said...

Oh, it's good that you've met the Hygiene Fairy as well, because I was a little worried that I'd hallucinated the whole event.

Mayhap there's some sort of clan of them?