SMELL: A smell down Memory Lane

So I haven't written in a while. Life after the holidays tends to be, for me, kind of like the smell of a restaurant kitchen at the end of the night. You know what I'm talking about. That steam-cleaned and empty smell that makes you gag and swear you'll finish school and get a dull desk job. I know that it is the time of year when just one week back at work or school after the holidays and you already want to call out sick because its too cold outside, you don't live in NJ (where people stand in the cold and pump your gas for you), and you are suddenly really curious as about whether or not Reggis will be on the Reggis&Kelly show, or whether or not your across the hall neighbors actually exsist.

And of course with the new year comes new resolutions. Mine are to eat vitamins everyday (day 13 and I haven't eaten one yet), and get involved in a local community of believers. And not to smell eggs or smoke if I can help it.

I read in an article a few days ago about how smells are the strongest triggers of memory and this facinates me. I thought about this at lunch when I was eating arroz con pollo (rice & chicken). I mixed the seasoning from the chicken in my rice like I have since I was three, and the smell of the food sent me back to my paternal grandmother's kitchen. I haven't thought of my early childhood in a while, but a couple things stick out from that era and they all have to do with smells or noses.

1. The car accident where Aggie went under the seat and came up with a black nose. The details are kind of blurry, but her sooty nose makes me laugh to this day.

2. The birthday party I or my sister had at McDonald's. I was in kindergarden or Pre-K, but I remember Andy and Josh sitting on rocking toys in the toy room while eating burgers. They were teenagers, so I imagine the party wasn't much fun for them.

3. I ate cereal at my paternal grandfather's table when we went to visit him. He was quite possibly the only one (besides relatives in Colombia) who could get me to eat cereal, since I hate cereal. But he would teach me where to put the accents in the stories I wrote for him and Abuela with my Spanish vocab words.

Smell is a very interesting trigger. I looked up all the instances the word "smell" was in the Bible, and its used like 4 times. The best verse was this one: "As dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor." Ecclesiastes 10:1. That's a great visual.


P.S. when are we ever going to have smell-vision? Didn't Willy Wonka invent that in the 70s?