Ask Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I saw last week’s question about deodorant. The only reason we think that BO stinks is that we spend so much time trying to cover it up. We’re just not used to it! If it hadn’t been for the Victorians trying to clean everyone up, we’d all smell like a week in the backcountry all the time, and we wouldn’t care. It would be normal. I’m all for cutting deodorants and returning us to our natural state. Are you with me?

– Eau De Humanity

Dear Whiff,

I’m halfway with you – I don’t like all the cover-up scents we’re supposed to wear. But I am also in favor of neutralizing about 98 percent of our natural human odors. Apes are smelly creatures, and we might just be the worst of the banana bunch. You can keep your industrial revolution and your digital revolution. My favorite human advancement of all is the one that lets me stay conscious in the presence of my own pits.

– Smell check, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I just boarded a plane for the first time in a year, and I had to unpack my entire carryon in the security lane. Now food items have to come out of our bags? What, did someone try to plant a bomb in a banana and a peanut butter sandwich? I pulled out, quite frankly, an embarrassing quantity of Clif Bars, and they nearly didn’t let me through to the gate. Why must they now judge our food by scanning it in its own dog food bowl?

– Flying the Hungry Skies

Dear Complimentary Peanuts,

Our sharpest scientists are working on how to tele-transport us across the country like Scottie beaming us to the mothership, taking us apart, particle by particle, and reassembling us on the other side. But since our sharpest scientists don’t work for TSA, those poor frontliners are doing their best to accomplish the same feat. They have the disassembling part down. Not so much the reassembly part. Or the transporting.

– Request the pat down, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

The smartest dating rule I ever heard was “don’t make plans further out than you’ve already been together.” In other words, don’t plan a trip six months from now when you’ve only been together for three. I need to know, is there a corollary rule for friendships? Namely, how long do you have to know each other before a friendship can survive five days in an Airbnb?

– Asking for a Friendship

Dear Sinking Ship,

I need you to complete the Ask Rachel Friendship Airbnb Questionnaire before I can provide you a definitive answer. Have you previously stayed over at each other’s houses? Can you stand the noise of each other’s morning and bedtime routines? Do you find the smell of each other’s BO to be a) repulsive, b) inoffensive, or c) actually kind of pleasant? If you answered B or C, you’re made for each other. Go enjoy that Airbnb, far away from the rest of us, and never come back.

– Hoo-whee, Rachel