Smell

The sense of smell is supposed to be the most evocative of all the senses.

1.       A certain smell can conjure a certain memory more clearly than any other sense.

Pantene Shampoo

During the summer I turned sixteen, I worked at a sleep away camp for a week in upstate New York. I was on the kitchen crew, so we basically cleaned dishes and prepared all the food for the whole camp. Surprisingly it was one of my favorite experiences in high school, but the one downside was that we had to get up before everyone else (around 7:30 am every morning) and go to the kitchen to start getting ready for breakfast. This meant that if you wanted a shower that was anything other than bone-chilling you had to get up around 7:00am. We took showers in this huge shower room, similar to a locker room shower area, but there were very high ceilings and big glass windows lined the top of the room.

Every morning for that entire week, I would fall out of bed and hazily walk to the showers still half asleep. I would go through the motions in a daze: turning on the shower, un-dressing, scrubbing my body. The early morning sun would be coming in through the big windows lighting up the room brightly, but not overpoweringly so, but it wasn’t until I was halfway through my shower that I really woke up and noticed this beauty. Halfway through my shower was when I would wash my hair and for the entire week I used Pantene shampoo. I would pour a big glob of it into my hands and lather my hair. It was when I would tilt my head up, to wash out the shampoo that I would really look up to the windows and take in the beauty of early morning sunshine. This little moment refreshed me, woke me up and allowed me to be ready to face anything that the day had to offer.

Now when I smell that shampoo I am immediately transported back to those early morning showers looking up at the delightful sunshine and feeling rejuvenated and ready to take on the day ahead.

2.       Smells are one the biggest things that people associate with certain places, things and people in their lives.

Coffee Breath

        As a child my entire family drank coffee, but the person who always seemed to have a coffee in hand was my grandfather. If he didn’t have a coffee in hand then he smelt of coffee, all the way down to his breath. Whenever you would talk to him, his breath would be tainted by coffee. It wasn’t just coffee but it was a mixture of old man breath, with coffee overpowering it. I used to yell at him about it saying he always had bad breath and to use a breath mint, but now that I myself have become a coffee drinker, I have found myself numerous times being caught by the coffee breath syndrome. Every time I am running out of the house and I catch a whiff of my coffee breath, all I can do is think of my grandfather and laugh. I was such a pest as a child, but he put up with my nagging all along, maybe he knew that someday it would all come full circle.

3.       There are some places, people and things that have their own unique smell, that can’t be found anywhere else.

Bourbon Street

Two words: Bourbon buttjuice. A mixture of throw up, alcohol, old garbage, piss, rancid leftovers from different mediocre food establishments, and then even more alcohol; daiquiri’s that went bad, hurricanes that got too whirled up, hand grenades that exploded - all blended together. YUM.

One of the first nights I was in New Orleans, my friends and I went to Bourbon Street to see what it was all about. We proceeded to get wildly drunk and go from one adventure to another as the night progressed. The only distinct thing I remember now from that experience was the smell. My friend drunkenly coined it bourbon buttjuice. It has stuck ever since. Nowhere else have I found that same stench, but it’s funny because now when something just absolutely stinks, my friends and I will jokingly refer to it as bourbon buttjuice.

4.       Smells can also not conjure any specific memory, but they can evoke certain strong emotions in people.

Change of Seasons

I always know that it is that time of year again when this smell starts popping up. There is some bush or tree that always blooms in New Orleans around the change of seasons. I don’t know the name of it nor could I really tell you what it looks like, though I have tried to figure it out a many times to no avail. Non-the-less at some point in early October when the unbearably hot, sticky summer has come to an end and before the cool winter season takes over this smell starts to melodically float through the air, lingering briefly in certain places and then drifting along wherever the wind will take it. It’s hard to describe but it is the by far my favorite scent of the flowery variety. It is very similar to honeysuckle, sweet and fruity at the same time, but it’s not honeysuckle. For me this smell is the bell that rings in the change of seasons, but even more so it is just a smell that fills me with happiness. I may be stressed, or angry or simply having a bad day and on my bike ride home I will soar through a patch of this smell and a wave of happiness will engulf me and will stay with me for the rest of the day.