I Want To Smell Like Ralph

I want to smell like Ralph.

Not the guy, the perfume.  I know I have an old bottle of it somewhere in my bathroom vanity at home, and while it’s not my signature fragrance (that would be Estee Lauder Pleasures), I like it.  It’s fresh.  It’s clean.  It’s youthful.  And it’s beautiful.

How do I know this?  Not from the Ralph Lauren marketing department.  Not even from my own experience while trying it on for size several years ago.  No, I know this from my recent run along the Ibis Trail, a four-mile loop around the University of Miami campus I navigated yesterday while visiting my daughter Jordan, a student at the school.

It was a gorgeous morning, with clear blue skies and a slight breeze.  The campus is really pretty, and running the trail is a great way to see a lot of it and better learn your way around, which I am trying to do, since this is just freshman year for her .

I’m also trying to stay healthy, tone myself up and keep my weight down, although to be perfectly honest, it needs to be about fifteen pounds further down than it is right now.  Trips to UM don’t help, with all the inevitable eating out, but I wouldn’t trade a visit for anything, so I am being diligent about keeping up with my exercise.

And that’s what brought me to campus yesterday morning, running (barely) among the slender, fit, healthy, beautiful young men and women who are students there.  Many of whom were wearing Ralph.  (I know this not because anyone committed the Great Perfume Faux Pas of over-application, but because I was inhaling rather deeply from my own over-exertion.)  How many girls were wearing it was actually quite surprising.  As was my realization that they smelled the way I was running to look.  Hah!  The fragrance itself became a kind of fuel … the scent motivating me, urging me on.  I’d pass another pretty girl and smell it again.  I’d run some more, a little faster.

The sun was warm, the sweat dampened my shirt, and I’m sure I smelled nothing like they did, but I was inspired.  I added an extra half-mile, finished wearily but triumphantly, and went back to my hotel to shower, change and get ready for the rest of the day.  I put on my makeup, blew out my hair and added my customary spray of Pleasures before leaving the room to meet my daughter for lunch. 

"Mmmm, Mommy, you smell good!"

Yes, I smell like Pleasures. 

My kids know it, my husband loves it, and I have come to embrace it.    

But I want to smell like Ralph.