WE ARE ALL PERFUME BOTTLES?

So, it may sound like another elaborate ploy of this short black boy to make all the models out there look bad, but I can assure you, it is not. Though a part of me wishes it was. I mean, I would like to be a villain, but I’m just not built like that. I mean, hating and being a villain takes up too much energy. Even in cartoons, the bad guy, the evil genius, does all the planning, and all the good guy has to do is mess it up. Simple! Maybe its not that simplistic, but hey, its basic. I like to keep things simple. Okay, I’m deviating again, haven’t mention perfume or bottle, not once. Okay, I’m going now.

We are all perfume bottles… I’m sure we’ve all flipped through one magazine or news paper or something, and have come across those nicely shaped bottles, very attractive coverings and caps, and you automatically fall in love, or should I say you instantly fall in love. In my case when I see an attractive perfume bottle, I quickly check the name and the price tag, that would either make me thank my stars or cringe at the thought of what brutality the price would do to my wallet. Yeah, that’s any man’s major concern. So, we have various categories of perfumes, based on the size, design of the container and most important of all, the content. We have the small expensive perfumes, we have big cheap perfumes, we have big expensive and small cheap perfumes. Perfumes come in various shapes and sizes, various styles and designs and so on. However as important as all those features are, the most important thing, or element of a perfume that makes it what it is, is the smell of the perfume. Yeah, the smell, that’s what makes the great names like Lacoste, D&G, Old Spice and so on, different from the 300 naira “Turari” that the local seller is selling. The smell, forget the size or the shape of the bottle or all those other things. If the smell is on point and lovely, then you don’t mind the price you’ll have to pay, so far you can afford it, even if you’ll have to save. That’s the way we humans are. You see, true beauty comes from the inside, its the character, the personality, the values, the beliefs, the faith, the principles of a person, these are the ingredients that make the perfect blend of the classy “perfume”.

Let’s assume you’re shopping one lovely afternoon, you walk into the Toiletries & Perfume segment of the store, then you see a perfume bottle that looks so darn good, you admire it, you check the price, seems like an awesome price, the bottle is large and long and will last long…”Oh My” you think to yourself. You check the price tag again just to be sure you are reading it right, you wouldn’t want to go the cashier’s stand and embarrass yourself when they say the price is N11,200 not N1,200-ouch! Anyways you’ve checked the label like 10 times then you finally decide to buy. On getting home you decide to spray on your perfume, and then walk into the living room to see which member of the family will first notice your new signature scent. You open the box and look over the perfume, beaming like a cashmere cat, then you open the cap and psstk psstk you spray it on, only to realise it smells horrible! Far below what you expected. Chai! Smells so inferior, more like an insecticide! How could you have fallen for that!? No matter how much you spend on that perfume, you are not likely to use it again. No matter how fine the bottle is.

That’s the same way we are, when our character is something of concern, its a problem. When a person is rude, or saucy, or aggressive, or violent, or proud, whatever it is, it spoils the totality of the perfume experience. No matter how fantastically packaged and pretty the person is. When picking friends, you have to look beyond what he/she looks like, how much the person has, you should look beyond the person’s presence or charisma or charms, or popularity. Because if you hang out with friends (or perfumes) who have moral deficiencies, or character flaws and are not trying to work on it, its only a matter of time before you take a bit of their perfume and add to yours, then you start smelling the same way (you know what I mean) and you do not want that. If you walk with perfumes with sweet smelling scents regardless of their looks, then you share out of it…even if you have character deficiencies, its only a matter of time before you pick some of their content and add to yours. The same applies to relationships, when we choose a spouse, mainly because of what they look like, you might be in for a shocker. The content might not be so good. Some people however, pick beautiful, sexy, shapely perfume bottles and when they find out that the content is foul smelling, they still hold on to it, they spray on the content of battery, slander, unkindness, rudeness, violence, infidelity and so on, they take it all because the container looks Oh so good. Does that make any sense? I’m sure it doesn’t. But a lot of us, I mean a whole Lot of us are guilty of this. Some of us are the culprits, some are the victims.

The same way we are careful when choosing a perfume, we should be careful when choosing those to associate with. We should be very careful, because there is always a price of cash, or time, affection and attention to pay and it is certainly not refundable. If things go wrong, we can only pick ourselves up and move on. You leave a fowl smelling perfume, the same way you walk away from destructive friends no matter how popular or cute, or rich they are. We should be careful when choosing friends or partners, ’cause at the end of the day, a fowl smell isn’t worth sticking to.