Smells that Send Me Back a Ways

Due to housing and financial issues, the past few days have been stressful but I don't want to go into details why.  It's not that I don't want to, it's just that I've learned from painful experience that it is unwise to blog about people so instead of blogging about specific happenings of my life, I will share something unrelated to the week.  This idea occurred to me as I opened the bookstore I where work.  As I turned on the air conditioner, a familiar smell blew at my face and I suddenly felt like I was seven-years-old and sitting in a closet under the stairs in my playroom.

According to Discovery Health, "A smell can bring on a flood of memories, influence people's moods and even affect their work performance. Because the olfactory bulb is part of the brain's limbic system, an area so closely associated with memory and feeling it's sometimes called the 'emotional brain,' smell can call up memories and powerful responses almost instantaneously."

The smell of hot glue and solder takes me back to my middle school and high school days when I was working on a project with friends in a basement for a program called Odyssey of the Mind.  You can see some music videos I made at one of the competitions here.

Sometimes, such as this morning, I think to myself, "It smells like bagpipes."  This thought comes from the fact that my dad played bagpipes when I was young.  He kept the case in the closet under the stairs.  I'm not sure if the smell I associate with the pipes are from the case or the actual instrument.  The scent is aged, airy wood.

When I was 13, my dad came back from the park with a pair of goslings.  My dad said that a couple had dropped the goslings off and left.  Knowing they wouldn't make it on their own and being as the goslings started following him, my dad took them home.  I attempted to raise them before giving them to a wild animal shelter.  They were precious.  If I had the describe their aroma I would say they smelt of warm fluff.  They had a very distinct smell.  So much so that I remember after one piano lesson I was walking to the car with my dad and I sniffed the air and observed, "It smells like goslings."  He agreed.