THINGS THAT ARE AWFUL BUT NECESSARY
“Ethyl mercaptan” is the sulfurous smell that is added to natural gas (which is odorless) so that you know when you have a gas leak in your home, and can keep you from dying of the toxin or blowing the place up. The odor resembles that of rotten leeks or onions or durian or cooked cabbage. In 1938, employees of Union Oil Company reported that turkey vultures would gather at the site of any gas leak, and that’s why they started to add ethyl more mercaptan to make detection of leaks easier.
Turkey vultures. Grammar. The shelf life of Twinkies. Old mortality. The sulfuring of food on sea voyages. Colonoscopies. Functional government. Not being able to talk to the dental hygienist while they work on you. The heating bill in winter, the cooling bill in summer. Moving your car before 8 A.M. for street cleaning day. Critiquing the poems of your worst student. Pain. Villains in novels. Another required week-long seminar of Sensitivity Training. Summer road work. Retaining a lawyer. Memory. Civics classes. Guns being compared to butter. Awkward memorial services for our most beloved friends and family. Mortality. Electoral polls. Buying yet another umbrella because you left yours at home and it’s coming down in buckets. The fact that there is not enough time, ever, to read the vast majority of text in The New Yorker, but you did read that excellent Tessa Hadley story. War in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, if only for the funny biz with Bonaparte letting the guys march right into the river. Any other season of “Grace and Frankie” that is not 2, 3, or 4. Taking the long way around. Rotating your tires. Porcupine quills. Skunk scent glands. Alarm clocks. Narrative cliffhangers. Used car salespeople. Thanksgiving with the in-laws. Bored orcas bump-wrecking billionaires’ yachts. The ridiculous price of a new sofa. First dates. Patiently waiting a couple of days before calling after a first date. Second dates. Regret. Prenup. Planned obsolescence. The food chain. Blood being thicker than water. Talking to children about organized religion without smirking. Rotating your tires. Reading the directions. Change. The Fortunate Fall, if you’re into that sort of thing. Ethyl mercaptan.
I have a friend/colleague (frolleague) whose grandfather survived the 1937 school explosion in Texas that killed a bunch of kids and led to the addition of ethyl mercaptan to natural gas. (And now you can add to the list: readers who comment on your Substack with tangential information not directly relevant to the spirit of your post.)
And the ridiculous price of having your sofa's seat and back cushions re-done after twenty years.