An Open Letter (6)

Dear lady in front of me at the theater,

I can see that you're of another generation. For that I will forgive you your ugly shirt with the weird embroidered cutouts. But have you, as the years have passed, lost your sense of smell?

I appreciate that public perfume-wearing doesn't (yet?) fall into the same category as public smoking. I get that scents have not (yet?) been shown to cause cancer, even second-hand. However, for some of us, sitting behind someone like you for two hours is beyond unpleasant - it is actually, physically painful. Did you forget that you'd be around other people besides just your husband on that evening? Or that you and those other people would be seated in very close quarters without the option of moving around for approximately 120 minutes?

And in the end, even if you were aware of all those things and still decided to flaunt your perfume in all our noses, couldn't you at least have spent more than five dollars on the bottle?