Los Banditos

Remember Prell?

I didn’t, until it hit me in the face in the elevator last month.

I’ve long thought, why get to know people, delve into their psyches, and really understand the cast of thousands who make up this ever rotating kaleidoscope of humanity we call New York City, when, instead, you can eye the dude who’s down the subway platform most mornings at 8:22, note his consistently shorter than average trousers, and then, for the next 2 years of mornings, think of him in your head as ‘Captain Short Pants’?

My insight is like a scythe slicing through the wheat of irony.

The really skinny, pretty crazy homeless guy with the cane who is usually on Lexington across the street from Grand Central who it’s hard to tell if he’s panhandling or just holding a cup of coffee, so you probably shouldn’t drop money into his cup? He always wears the same pair of jeans, which are normal denim colored at the top, but are faded acid washed denim from his shins downward, making it look like he’s kind of standing on stilts. He’s Mr. Stilts.

Every day is like a haiku in my brain.

I’ve named these two gentlemen with visual references in mind, but an olfactory reference point introduced me to a brand new dramatis personae: The Prell Bandit.

I feel like I used Prell in junior high, when my awkwardness was spiraling towards its spectacular peak (nadir?) circa the 1991-1992 school year. I had a horsey overbite, wore men’s extra-large waffle-knit henley shirts from Eddie Bauer (I had three in constant rotation), and apparently washed my hair with Prell.

I had forgotten completely about Prell until I had one of those Proust’s madeleine moments in the elevator, when I got on, and the whole damn car was stinking of shampoo. My brain wheeled, whirled, and gave me a single, glistening word, trembling like a drop of moisture on a turtle’s dewlap.

Prell.

Basically, no shampoo reeks as much as Prell, and even though the elevator was completely empty, it smelled like my shower the year I started plucking my eyebrows into something resembling two separate entities.

Who was this Prell Bandit? Did they know they were using a shampoo that might make them vulnerable to bear attacks? Is it legal to use a shampoo that lingers around like Elijah on a slow seder night?

Because of my searing intellect, I forget 98% of everything almost immediately, and I forgot about the Prell Bandit promptly. Until I got on the elevator a week later, and it was like the elevator had been doused in blood like in that scene from “The Shining” only the blood was invisible Prell odor.

I wish I could give you an accurate description of Prell’s cloying, highly perfumed chemical bouquet, but I lack the verbal ability. It’s got Lysol top notes with a base of alcohol and pairs well with Ivory soap.

Someone, somewhere, is using too much Prell. Do I leave a note? Do I walk from floor to floor sniffing, like a bipedal bloodhound? Or do I sit, endure, and wait for the elevator to start smelling like Timotei?