Smoke Monster

I'm all about weird phenomenon. I always hoped that that was what I was. There was that night when we were about to head out to Tyler or Longview and because of the way I was dressed my grandmother asked:

Mimi: (laughing) Starr, Why did you pick us?

Starr: What?

Mimi: When you were flying around up in the sky why did you pick this family?

Starr: (confused) I don't know. Alright bye.

[Starr and Alan leave]

I remember sitting in the car and asking you if she had just accidentally revealed that I'm the alien child that I always thought I was? Later I realized that based on her belief system she meant that before being born I was an angel flying around Heaven looking for a cool family to hangout with. The idea of originating as an ethereal angel was a wicked idea but the hard fact was that I was merely human (although I now find this to be quite miraculous as well).

But back to weird phenomenon.

The other day I had a little crisis. I got so stressed I smelled like campfire smoke. Like the kind of scent that you get after a weekend long Boy Scout campout. That smell that you have to wash out of your clothes. Except for a flannel shirt. You just air those out so you keep that good, smokey essence. And it wasn't like a cigarette smoke smell, like I'd been at some bar in Longview listening to Myra Mayns. It was that good wood smell from the trees and leaves we'd burn in the fires. This was the most stressed I had been in a long time, maybe ever. The people around me at work smelled it as soon as I walked in the room. I had just walked two blocks from the point of my stress. No buildings, or gutter trash were on fire out in the street. There was maybe the smoke coming from a hot dog cart on the way back, but this wasn't just in my clothes from briefly walking through dissipating smoke. It was sweating out of my skin. I went to the bathroom and and washed my head and arms. Took some deep breaths and went back to work. A very short time later the smokey smell went away.

So I started thinking. I knew what caused the stress. I did. I let myself get worked up and let the flood gates open. It was business with a mega corporation that sparked it. I controlled it very well since I was in a place of business and didn't yell or scream even as I walked back to work. And then I thought I must have been pretty pissed to start sweating out something that smells like smoke. Like some defense mechanism written into my genes from eons of evolution. So what would happen if I got that mad again or even angrier? Would I actually start smoking? And if so, could I get even more upset so that I actually catch fire?

I will not try to prove this idea right (or wrong). I mustn't. But oh, if I could...