Perhaps His Royal Highness, The Fresh Prince, was on to something when he indicated the link between olfactory sensations and memory back in his Grammy award winning 1991 song, Summertime. It's known that certain areas of the brain which receive signals when you smell something are also areas involved in memory. It's amazing to me that a smell can easily remind you of another place, another time. Even if the memory itself is no longer crisp, a smell can bring you back.
Recently, I got into our rental car and something about the smell of that car made me think about riding in my grandparents' car when I was a kid. I'm not sure what it was, but it started me thinking about how smells will mean different things to different people. They may recognize it as the same thing, but the memories associated with it are completely different.
For example: The smell of apples should mean Fall, and it does, but when I smell apples strongly I remember entering (what I think is) a store as a child. The store smelled of apples so strongly that it is automatically the first thing to come to mind. It was Fall and apparently near Halloween, because I remember a cackling witch that was there as part of the decorations. I remember essentially nothing else, but this is what I think of almost every time.
It's strange isn't it. You probably have similar things of your own. Even if you can't think of them now, they will come to you when those certain smells are there. We humans are very weird creatures.
March 01, 2007
Makes Me Wonder How The Smell From A Grill Can Spark Up Nostalgia
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3 comments:
I love the way smell triggers memories so strongly. It's been a primary fascination of mine for as long as I can remember.
Here's one unfortunate story though: Way back in 1989 or so, my friend gave me a bottle of perfume that I had been coveting. I sprayed it on and basked in its amazing scent.
On the exact same day, I started reading Pet Sematary by Stephen King. I lived alone and I was pretty young so the book scared the bejeezus out of me. From that moment on, the smell of my "favorite" perfume smelled like a cemetery to me and I could never wear it again.
I only got to wear it for about 2 or 3 days. :( Bummer!!
To this day, if I smelled it, it would freak me out.
The place with the cackling witch and the smell of apples was the farmer's market in Huntsville where we went every Fall to buy apples and see the lady who dressed as a witch.
Well, since that means that the oldest I could have been was 5 years old, that does help explain why my memory is so faint. That also makes the fact that a smell automatically reminds me of it even more impressive.
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