Opinion: Time to Ax Axe?

There you are, sitting in Ms. Johnson’s pre-calculus class, still jubilant after last night’s daring but successful phone call to the girl of your 15-year-old dreams.  You finish your doodling – a fine rendition of Kyle punching Cartman, if you do say so yourself – and the bell mercifully rings, allowing you that 10 minutes of freedom before your next class.  You hit the hall, and you instantly stagger backwards.  Dizzy and short of breath, you gather yourself and proceed as best you can – not to your locker, but to the school nurse’s office.  You’ve been Axed.

A Minnesota lawmaker has actually proposed legislation to start an educational campaign targeted at high schoolers to discourage the use of strongly-scented body sprays such as the popular Axe.  It seems that the body sprays, which are advertised as some sort of instant chick-magnet juice, are actually causing innocent bystanders to suffer asthma attacks and other problems, such as headaches. 

According to one high schooler, many boys use the sprays as a substitute for the good old-fashioned morning shower.  Apparently they feel this requires that they use even more of the pungent potions.  After all, before the sprays can attract the ladies like mosquitoes to a bug zapper, the fellahs have to cover up that just-got-out-of-gym-class smell.

If for nothing else than sheer amusement, these sprays should absolutely be outlawed in the halls of America’s public schools.  With such stringent academic standards and such time-consuming and difficult classes, the last thing these young people need is the distraction of a thick fog of Mystic Mountain Maniac scent clogging their nostrils.

The solution lies in the old days of swimming in the local pool.  Remember how sometimes you just didn’t want to get out of the pool to answer nature’s call?  After all, who would know?  Just as you were about to let loose, you remembered a conversation with your buddy a few weeks before in which he told you about the chemical in the pool that turns the water bright red if you let loose in the water.  Though a mighty battle ensued in your mind, your logical side always won out over your curious side, and you simply got out of the pool and headed to the bathroom.  You never did find out for sure if your buddy was serious or full of it, but you quickly remember that you’re now in your twenties and it’s definitely too late to put that to the test.

Outlawing body sprays in schools opens up a whole new world of marketing along similar lines.  Remember your trip to the nurse’s office earlier?  Well, if Axe and similar products were outlawed, schools would jump at the chance to buy an airborne additive that turns such sprays into an easily-visible cloud.  If the schools already had this in place, you could have avoided the bright green fog trailing the sweaty kid with his gym shorts on – you know he hasn’t washed those things this semester.  This would have afforded you the opportunity to hang back, walk down the opposite side of the hall, and make your safe escape.

This same product could be altered slightly to indicate offenders with halitosis, B.O., and, of course, flatulence.  It could be sold in small bottles not unlike those which currently contain the soon-to-be-outlawed body sprays – no one would ever leave home without their little bottle of “Hoof Arted.”  Olfactory offenders would no longer be safe anywhere!

Or, perhaps, we could just count on urban legends about products like these to stifle would-be offenders.

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