Filth ain't Always Filth

When I was in the first grade and the mornings were nice, my mother would allow me to walk to school with the second grader that lived across the street. This boy's father was a policeman so he had to be good and responsible. Actually he was not a nice boy and would bully me and the other kids in the neighborhood. I really did not want to walk with him even though it was only a few blocks. I also did not have much of a choice since it was the only way to get to school. This guy was not well liked except by the adults who had respect for his Dad. I never will forget walking through the dark living room as I entered their house. When I arrived in the den and kitchen area it also was very dark. There was one light bulb in a socket hanging from the ceiling. I could not tell what color of paint was on the walls as my eyes would take a while to get accustomed to the lack of light. The darkness in that house must have created a musky, sort of mildew type smell. Every time I had to go inside his house I would almost get sick at that dingy, dirty smell. I remember other times in my life that I would unexpectedly run across that smell and remember that dirty house that I had to sit and wait for that boy to get ready before going to school. I was given an extra dose of the sense of smelling. I can actually smell a fire before smoke can be seen. Some perfumes force me to leave the room because the smell would repulse me. I wonder how many relationships would have been different if the lady's perfume had not been repulsive. I am not happy about this condition because it has caused much discomfort in my life.
Other conditions have caused discomfort in my life. I use the word condition but I might mean attributes or habits or learned behavior. I always fell in love with codependent women. I always had to be a leader even when I should not have been. This attribute kept me from ever learning how to follow. I always said that people who think they know it all are repulsive because they do not know that they think they know everything. I think I know it all but at least I know that I think I know it all. This helps me to stand out as different. I like standing out as different even though there is no reason for me to stand out. I choose to stand out as different and I choose to lead and I chose to marry codependent women but I did not choose to walk to school with the guy who lived in that smelly house.
Thirty years after I had to go in that neighbors house I decided to open a restaurant. This too was not necessarily what I should have done but I did. A few weeks after opening we had our second visit from the health department. At that visit the inspector told me to take a hand towel and put it in a bucket of water with Clorox added to the water. He said this would help to sanitize the counters as we cleaned with that cloth. After days I began to smell that nasty, dirty, musky smell in my restaurant. The same odor I smelled in that boy's dark house. This was not to be and I vowed to rid my restaurant of this smell and its cause. After tracing it to this bucket with Clorox in it I realized that I had been wrong for over thirty years. The smell in my restaurant was not of filth or uncleanliness but that of cleanliness. That smell in that boys house had been the smell of sanitizer. It had been the smell of cleanliness not filth. How can we know something without a shadow of a doubt only to find out years later we were wrong? How can we know it all or even think we know it all when in reality we don't know very much?How can we keep marrying codependent women even though we know it will make us unhappy? How can we learn to be better followers? How can we invent a sanitary agent that doesn't smell like Clorox and water?