I sort of lifted the topic for this post off Tirithien's blog. Not really stole the idea, but rather had a memory awakened after reading that post. Tirithien was noting that certain smells (olfactory triggers) could mentally teleport him to another place and time.
I was reminded that, although I have many triggers that transport me to different places, there is one scent that remains a mystery. It happens very rarely, maybe once every two or three years. I don't recognize the smell as being a familiar one - nothing I can name like Pachouli or burnt popcorn, but invariably it reminds me of something. The eerie part is, I don't know what that something is. I just know unquestionably that it makes me feel good. It's like the memory is in the shadows and if I search hard enough I will find it, but I never do. The recollection is so comfortable and familiar but my mind refuses to encompass it. Maybe it's a portion of my life from infancy. A time when I was too young to place any cognitive connections with the event. If that's true, then it's amazing I remember anything at all, vividly or otherwise.
The rarity of the occasion doesn't aid in the solution either. Without the smell present, the imprint of the memory that is surely there is impossible to capture. It's been at least a couple years now since I've experienced this unique happening. Maybe I'm due.
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What is the scent that triggers your memory, naive-no-more? I have one too....it's the scent of an old perfume called "Evening in Paris". My mother used to wear it!
I used to go to the doctor with my mom when I was little – she had to get bi-weekly allergy shots. My family used this doc until he retired when I was in college. The doctor’s office had a distinct smell. Not unpleasant, and not rubbing alcohol, or band-aids, or anything like that - just a distinctive, unidentifiable smell that I’ve never encountered anywhere else. Until recently.
My office bought a used filing cabinet earlier this year. The inside of the filing cabinet smells exactly like the doctor’s office we went to when I was little. It’s so distinctively identical that as soon as a caught a whiff os that smell I flashed back to that office as if I were right there. I even wonder if it once belonged to our former doctor.
Once in a very rare while, I get a "whiff" of something that smells like the little baby dolls that I used to hold and cuddle as a child; kinda that rubbery, fresh 60's toy smell!
Invariably there are different things that take me back to another time: smells, songs, sights....even little "snippets" of a memory that run through my mind and take me back in every way to that time, only lasting a second. I love it all!
You probably don't go back and read these but this one has me curious.
You said that you've never found the memory of that precise smell, but you have your own theory, right?
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