I watched my son walk across the parking lot to where we were standing and make a statement he probably didn’t realize was profound.
He had just walked one of our friends to her car, carrying her go-box of food from the restaurant. Once he opened the door and put the food on the passenger seat, he came back to us and said, “Wow. Her car smells like my childhood — cigarettes, air fresheners and leather.”
I nodded in agreement — not because he had noticed it, but because he had inadvertently given me a great line and an idea for a column.
I stuck my head inside her car window long enough to know that he was right. It did, indeed, smell like cigarettes, air freshener and leather.
I admired the fact that those three smells had transported him to his late teenage years.
And I knew exactly what he meant because I knew that’s what smells do.
They are tied to our memories like nothing else. Scientists have studied this phenomenon and come up with a bunch of reasons for explaining what all of us already know: a smell can reach back through decades and, in an instant, put you somewhere you haven’t been in years.
When I first began selling Coppertone suntan lotion, my manager handed me a bottle and instructed me to open it, smell it and tell him what I thought.
I opened the bottle, and my nose became a time machine.
I was immediately taken back to Panama City as a 10-year-old, jumping in the surf, feeling the sting of salt water in my eyes, the sun beating down on my shoulders and the sand sticking to my feet.
I hadn’t thought about that particular moment in years. But there it was. One whiff of Coppertone, and I could almost feel my mom slathering that lotion on my back in our small hotel room.
And I’m sure you remember that intoxicating smell when you opened the door of your parents’ new car for the first time. It’s incredibly pleasant.
It’s the smell of change, of newness, and the smell of fear. I was deathly afraid to spill anything on the seat. Until that smell went away, it wasn’t an automobile — it was a shrine on four wheels.
I know women spend untold millions of dollars on perfume trying to entice men, but I think they may be missing something. If someone really wanted to create a fragrance that would attract men like ants to a Snickers bar, they should invent a perfume that smells like a new car.
The smell of a library always takes me to a wonderful place. The combination of old books, paper and dust — it’s the aroma of knowledge. When I walk through the door and inhale, I’m transported back to the fourth grade. I think about my mother taking me to the library and letting me pick a half dozen books for a summer reading program. Back then, I thought I was just checking out books. Now I realize she was opening up an entire world for me. It’s nice to be reminded of that.
Not all smells evoke pleasant memories. The smell of isopropyl alcohol will undoubtedly whisk me to the doctor’s office I went to as a kid. And that smell usually meant I was going to get a shot. One whiff, and I still get a quick pulse and a knot in my stomach.
Perhaps this article has made you think about your own bank of memory smells.
The smell of biscuits that instantly takes you to your grandmother’s kitchen. A freshly opened box of crayons that puts you in an elementary school desk. A chlorine-infused swimming pool may remind you of summers at the YMCA. The list is endless: Play-Doh, a baseball glove, a barber shop, gasoline at a service station, a freshly mowed lawn, a box of old photographs. I know you have your own.
I was relating this story to the nurse at my doctor’s office as she brought out the alcohol wipe to prep me for an injection. She began nodding her head.
“I walked past one of my patients yesterday, and he smelled like the brand of cigarettes that my favorite uncle smoked — my uncle who is no longer with us.“It made me wanna go back and smell it again.”
I understood. I know that everyone who reads this story has a smell that takes them to someone, somewhere or something.
Even if it’s a beat-up teenager’s car.
Joe Hobby is a barbecue-loving comedian from Alabama who wrote for Jay Leno for many years. Find more of Joe’s stories on his blog at mylifeasahobby.blogspot.com. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/JoeHobbyComedian.
