Stress sweat lurks, and it also stinks
OK, I am freaking out. I thought I had problems like paying the bills, raising children and remembering to give the dogs their tick medicine.
Turns out I have other, more serious problems and I have had them for 47 years and did not even know about them. I did not have a clue until this week that there is a thing called “stress sweat” and that it smells worse than sweat caused by other issues such as bench presses, opening a tough salsa jar or sitting too long in the same position in a fake leather recliner.
I learned about stress sweat from TV commercials for Secret Clinical Strength antiperspirant.
According to the commercials, stress sweat is different from and smellier than heat sweat or activity sweat. As the commercials say, “Stress sweat can happen to anyone at any time.” It’s happening to me right now. I’m stress sweating about stress sweat, and just a few days ago I didn’t even know it was a thing.
The commercials say stress sweat can be caused by things like riding in a packed subway car when there’s a super cute guy standing beside you. Or falling asleep in a movie theatre and making a snort noise when there’s a super cute guy sitting in front of you. We’ve all been in those situations and if we were wearing our Secret Clinical Strength, we would be protected four times better than with regular antiperspirants.
I get stressed about a lot of things and they don’t always involve being in close proximity to super cute guys. If it’s not TV commercials telling me I stink or that I have yellow teeth or frizzy hair, it’s the internet telling me I’m antisocial and my career is at a hopeless dead end because I’m not on LinkedIn.
I don’t even know how I got down this rabbit hole, but I clicked on a few articles, read a few things and, according to people who sounded pretty smart, the world is leaving me behind because I don’t have a professional network of LinkedIn connections. On Facebook, they’re called friends. On LinkedIn, these people are not your friends. They are your “connections.”
I don’t get it. I have started and deleted several LinkedIn profiles over the years and now I’m at it again — trying to see the point of it all. So I add a photo of myself, post my resumé online for any gawker to see and wait for professional-type people to find me and bring me into their inner circle.
Then I get swamped with requests from people I’ve never met. Then I stress sweat. Who are these people? What do they want from me? And what’s wrong with them that they would randomly want me in their network. Me?
I can find stress almost anywhere. I went to brunch recently and it stressed me out. Brunch! It’s supposed to be a delightful hybrid of breakfast and lunch, and here I was in line for the buffet getting all worked up and overheated. Every person in line was lifting the cover off the sausages or gravy or potatoes, spooning some onto their plate then replacing the cover and moving on. There are 100 people in line. Just leave the cover off, people. Let’s agree on this, can we?
Brunch is completely overrated. It’s supposed to be this big event but if you ask me, it’s just a way for restaurants to take breakfast and lunch and add the prices of both and charge you $35 for eggs.
Not just eggs — omelettes. There’s this whole omelette station at brunch with all the ingredients on display as if this is some great big culinary deal. Oooh. Is that ... red pepper? I’ll try that. How exotic. Oh, and cheese? With eggs? I must try that. Cook it in front of me please so I can watch this magic.
And the chef, actually dressed in white and topped with one of those big, goofy chef hats, makes a show of frying up some eggs with stuff in them ... $35, please.
As I move through the brunch buffet I try to do some quick calculations to see if I’m close to breaking even. I try to estimate the price of my meal if it was on a menu, but it’s difficult because I’ve never seen any menu item like “Carved Roast Beef with Chicken Breast, Smoked Salmon, Cheesecake and Bacon.”
The Secret people are right. Stress sweat is real and it can strike anyone at any time.