The scent of smells

 

GBE-R.6  Scent.

What scent/scents trigger a memory, a feeling? Does it make you long for times past, or give you a sense of contentment/unease?

This is my two cents on our sense of scents:

Sometimes a certain scent, like some songs, can take you from the right here, to the right then.

The smell of coco tanning butter or chlorine take me back to the days I used to spend at the local pool. Surrounded by half naked females and laughing kids, feeling the cool water caress my skin after being baked by a hot sun, it was like John Denver singing about West Virginia; those days at the pool were, to me, “Almost Heaven”. Even now, at an age where nobody wants to see me in a bathing suit, either of those scents still makes me smile and yearn for summer days.

Before we moved to the house I now reside in, a neighbor had a lilac bush. It always smelled so pretty when it bloomed. That scent seemed to have a calming effect one me. I learned to love the scent of lilac, so I thought it would be a good idea to plant a lilac bush close to the house. I can now say this should be landscaping mistake number one.

I planted it right by the window where my bed is. The window that is right by my head when I sleep. The window that is usually open whenever the temperature is above forty degrees. The window that gets closed when the dang thing blooms. If I don’t close it, my bedroom smells like a whorehouse, or a perfume factory where a fifty five gallon drum of lilac scent #12 spilled. It’s so strong my eyes water and my nose twitches. Eventually the scent will permeate the whole house and any fabric in close proximity. It may even be a bit strong at the neighbors house. I now know when those light purple flowers start to bloom, it’s time to shut the windows and turn on the air conditioning.

 

I never understood using some scents for shampoo. I do not want my hair to smell like flowers, fruit, or herbs. I would be afraid a swarm of bees might mistake me for something to pollinate, or flies would attack my noggin thinking they had found an over ripe Kumquat. I don’t want the herbal smell of my hair to cause any animals to mistake me for something to take a bite out of. I prefer more natural scents, like “Summer rain”, “Ocean breeze” or “Mountain air”.

I also like the manly scent of Irish Spring soap. The original scent. Not one of the half dozen other “new” Irish Spring scents that I keep buying by mistake because the packaging looks the same. I don’t think I have bit of Irish ancestry in me, but because of the Irish Spring soap scent, I think I would enjoy spring there.

There are other scents that cause other reactions. When I was a young whippersnapper, I was visiting my Grandmothers house when one of my aunts permed her hair. The caustic chemical smell drove me out of the house. My brain felt like it was trying to expand past my skull. My eyes watered. My nostrils burned. My stomach suddenly felt sick. I don’t know what they were using back then, but it smelled like it would remove your hair, and quite possibly melt your head.

The hot acrid smell of roof tar or new blacktop also offend my olfactory senses.

I’m sure there are other smells, good and bad, that affect me, but those are the ones that come to mind first.

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