No matter what, the smell of rubbing alcohol reminds me of being in my pediatrician's office, four years old, waiting for whatever would happen when Dr. Pete came in the room. Usually, he would bustle in, speaking loundly, and always asking me the same question. "You married yet?" To which my response was always a shy wriggle off of the exam table and into my mother's lap.

Again he would ask, "Well if you're not married, do you have a boyfriend?" All the while in my child's brain I wondered why for goodness sake he was asking me this sort of question. The voice inside my head that was never loud enough for anyone else to hear would say "Of course I'm not married, you fool, I'm four years old, what kind of question is that anyway? And why are you so concerned about it?" Even as a small child, that question made me feel very strange.

Then he would make me stick out my tongue and do that awkward thing where you lay on the table and the doctor presses on your organs until you can't breathe and then I would leave his office with a prescription for amoxocillian, the best and most effective medication of all time.