Let me paint the picture for you. Here I am a 43 year old, recently divorced, single father in a newly rented house and right after my kids and I moved in we noticed a mildew smell coming out of my basement that could choke a donkey. I was already feeling pretty low due to the divorce, and now I had an actual fog surrounding me.
Then, destiny knocked. Literally! Most people probably discover their destiny by looking into the eyes of their soulmate, or staring at a beautiful sunset, or maybe even in a dream. But not me. For me it turns out, destiny was my friend Keith who was came over to see how I was doing. He just happened to be in the neighborhood. What a happy accident ☺
When I let Keith in I could tell immediately that he noticed the smell. If you’ve ever had a bad smell in your house or your car you know what I’m talking about. You let someone in, and no matter how polite they try to be, they can’t hide it. The telltale twitch of the nose, the slight turn of the head, the exhale.
If it was anyone else I might have been mortified, but luckily Keith and I had become friends over the years due to our kids growing up together, and even more than that, Keith is just a good guy. Still, I addressed the elephant in the room head on. I handed him a beer and said, “drink this quick so you don’t smell my mildew filled basement.” Keith laughed and then he did something beyond what I ever hoped. He solved my problem.
“Hold tight Scott, I got something for you”, Keith said and he ran out to his car. He then returned with something that looked like a hockey puck. “It’s a new product we’re developing”, he said, “it’s made of tea tree oil, it’s natural, and it’s great at eliminating odors.”
Tea tree oil. Natural. Maybe Keith wasn’t smelling what I was smelling, but I needed the big guns on this one. It was going to take a full team of remediation professionals armed with heavy chemicals to fix this smell, of that much I was sure. But Keith is a good guy and I didn’t want to offend him so I ran down and put one in the basement. He even offered me one for my car, “to deal with the smells from your kids sports equipment”, he said. Yeah right Keith, whatever you say. Eye roll emoji.
Keith and I then sat and caught up over a beer or two before he had to leave.
It’s amazing what time with a good friend can do. The fog started lifting. Then, later that evening when my son went to the basement to play Xbox he yelled up the stairs to me the words that would change the trajectory of my life.
“Hey Dad, good news, it doesn’t smell down here anymore!”
In next week’s blog I am going to share the story of how the name Azuna came about!!
