I am not sure why some made the cut and some didn't. Why some stuck around for a long time and others barely made it past the first application. We thought the one called "Charlie" would be a natural fit...her being Charlie and all. Blech! I have learned that some scents are more reactive with an individual's chemistry so they are not exactly the same on every woman. In fact that was the selling point on one of them. Others smell exactly the same if you put them on a fence post (I know this because putting perfume on a fence post is an effective way to keep Ingo, our Lab/Border Collie mix who thinks he is a beaver, from chewing on the post). There were some perfumes in the sixties and seventies that were great but seem to have disappeared; one rule of marketing is that if Big Fat Daddy likes it, it won't be around long. I always liked one called "Intimate" until I went to Vietnam where every bar girl in Saigon thought more was always better and Intimate was the most popular. Now when I smell it, I gag. For a while in the seventies there was one called "You're the Fire" which billed itself as "liquid inscense". We both liked it but when we went overseas we couldn't get it and when we came back it was gone. "Jungle Gardenia" was one of my all-time favorites. It was around for a long time.

One day in the early seventies, I was looking around in a Skaggs in Phoenix. A woman walked by trailed by the absolutely most intriguing perfume. I manuevered around to cross her path a few times and finally got the courage to approach her. I had to know what that perfume was. So I went up to her and said, "I couldn't help but notice the way you smell." Pretty smooth, huh? I realized immediately how that could be misinterpreted and started back-pedaling. Fortunately she wasn't too thin-skinned and I think she was amused at my obvious ineptitude with ladies. Anyway, she said it was a new Estee Lauder "fragrance" (man, I wish I had used that word) called "Aliage". I went out and bought some for MamaCharlie right away. She wasn't too happy about me accosting strange women with inquiries about how they smelled, but she was very happy with the new "fragrance" and it stayed on our favorite list for years. That led to a number of experiments into Estee Lauder products and some of them were pretty cool. Every Christmas they made gift kits that included some of their more popular lines with a new product thrown in. We came across a few that way. Cinabar, Youth Dew, White Linen...

Sitting here now and thinking about it, I can't even remember a lot of the brands and names we tried. Like I said, a lot of them just didn't make the cut. Some of them were more popular with me than with MamaCharlie. Anyway, Dune is her all time favorite and is the only one she has gone out and bought a refill for herself. It has become her "signature" scent. Which is okay with me; I like it, too.

To avoid being labeled a sexist, I will add that over the years I have moved from scent to scent, myself. In high school it was always Jade East and English Leather. Being the son of a sailor, I received gift kits of Old Spice almost every Christmas and birthday from the time I was 13 or 14. I have settled on Bay Rum of late, but still will throw on a little of the old smells when I crank up the GTO. Heheeheee. But for the record, I am not one of those guys whose aftershave will assault you thirty seconds before his arrival. But anyone as smooth with the ladies as I am (witnessed in the third paragraph) needs a little help.