Has this ever happened to you? You're having a nice conversation with a friend and, suddenly, you notice his or her eyes are watering like Emeril shoved an onion down their boxers. Or, you get approached by the producers of This Old House to assist them in stripping the varnish off the bannisters in Nathan Hale's outhouse. (Hale had a very elaborate outhouse.) Maybe your dog has been offering you a rawhide chew stick with "Extra Tartar Control." Yes, it is that time of the year. The fifth season that nobody wants to talk about. Right between Winter and Spring, here comes Bad Breath. As we mentioned on FirstNews, Tuesday morning, according to researchers, this is the worst time of the year for exhaling stuff that maybe doing damage to the ozone layer. Mostly because of folks having colds and flu which can lead to nasal drainage and mucous build-up and I hope you are not eating right now. Of course, bad breath comes from bacteria in the mouth which can be combated by brushing and flossing. However, in rare instances, the breath may be so atrocious that the brush and floss may refuse to enter. "I'm not going in there no matter how much Crest you pile on my bristles. You tell the ADA to come and see me, personally, if they have a problem. I'd rather you use me to get the gunk out of your grout. By the way, floss is stringing along with me on this decision."

I had a friend in high school who had beyond-bad, bad breath. He knew it. Let's call him "Hal." Short for Hal-itosis. Hal had been told his breath smelled like a variety of things over the years. Like chickens...not the delicious aroma of BBQ or baked...but like real, live chickens. He'd had fishermen ask to drop a line down his throat because "there has to be a carp in there somewhere." His breath actually had a range of odor from just a little stale, on the low end, to the inside of Orson Welles' penny loafers, in the middle, to the waiting room of an elephant proctologist on the far end, no pun intended. No one had actually lived to talk about that end of things, again, no pun intended. It was based on "Hal's" self-reporting and he insisted that on his worst days his breath was, in terms of pungency, all it was cracked up to be, this time, pun intended.

On Saturday nights, when we'd cruise our little town...which took about seven minutes, going 11 miles per hour, three times around...we'd go in separate cars with the windows rolled down, hollering across the median in order to have a conversation. Forget about girls. From afar, they liked him okay. But, up close...well, they never actually got up close. Eventually, "Hal" went to the doctor who, once he came to, prescribed some sort of heavy-duty mouthwash. Listerine on steroids. The last I heard, "Hal" was required to register with the Department of Homeland Security as a "PWMDIMIO." That stands for "Possible Weapon of Mass Destruction If Mouth Is Open."

Still, if I could talk to "Hal," I would assure him that his was not the worst breath I've ever been overwhelmed by. That distinction belongs to my children. There is nothing like the smell of strep throat breath. Not even teenager breath. When the kids were little and would get strep throat, they'd feel just awful and want to cuddle up on my lap to rest. They looked kind of pathetically cute until they would open their mouths and all the demons from every underworld would pounce on the nostrils. There was one time when all four had this condition within days of each other. It was in that period that my hair turned gray, my eyesight took a turn for the worse and I developed a small limp. I guess "Strep Throat Breath" supports what the researchers say about this time of the year.

Just the same, I'll never hear or think of the phrase "Breath of Spring" the same way again.