Smell memories?
 

Heh. I couldn't really think of a better title.

So I've been working on an extensive remodel in my mom's new apartment building - in two of the five units, we tore down walls, put new ones in, strung wires, all the good stuff. To facilitate the framing, we bought a Paslode gas operated nail gun. In the course of the remodel, I think I've probably fired well over 1000 nails.

When you prepare the gun to fire, you must depress a safety catch, and when that safety catch is depressed, a little bit of gas - just enough to get a whiff - is released from the cartridge. After countless hours of framing, shimming, and strapping, I literally smell this thing in my sleep. I can't stop smelling it.



Well, except for a few minutes ago, when (for whatever reason) I distinctly smelled - get this - a rubber bouncy ball. Like the kind you can buy for a quarter from a machine outside supermarkets (at least in Maine).


The one that happens the most often for me, however, is this: I'll usually be walking along the streets of the city I live in now, and I'll smell hot dogs. Not just any hot dogs, however, but hot dogs from Mark's Hot Dogs, a hot dog stand that only operates during the summer, but it's been there every summer for as long as I can remember. And I usually smell them during the winter. Weird, huh?


This happens to me pretty frequently, when I'll smell something (or imagine I smelled it), and it will conjure a very specific image. I hear that this happens a lot, so I'm wondering... what do you smell? When you're walking down the street, or when you wake up in the middle of the night, what do you absolutely need to have?

I get the same thing.

When I'm having an asthma attack (not very often, but sometimes) I can smell the medicine that they gassed me with when I was rushed to the hospital as a kid.

Every time I smell Old Spice I automatically think of my grandfather, even though that's not the collogne he wears. I haven't seen him since I was nine. I wonder if he still smells like that.

The smell that is inhearent to all appartment buildings I've ever been in remind me of a friend, and smoking weed and dancing to Oasis.

The smell of marijuana reminds me of Sharlene and how beautiful she was my first time smoking. She let me wear her coat so mine wouldn't smell like it, and she put her arm around me as we listened to Marq tell us stories on the balcony. I was in love with her that night.

They say that scent is the strongest memory. You and I aren't the only ones with "smell memories" MooseMan

Woodsmoke . . . conjures up images of camping, staying up late under the stars. It is bar none, my favorite smell.

:)

sweetpea

I get the same effect from woodsmoke as sweetpea... I love that smell.

Sandlewood reminds me of many things... A girl I believe I would have married if the chance had arisen, one of the houses I grew up in, my grandfather on my mother's side...

I have a wooden tool chest that was my great-grandfather's that reminds me of the times I went to my great-grandmother's house... that chest and her basement smell exactly the same... old, dusty and full of a certain weight.

Gunsmoke... well, let's just say the image brought to mind pisses me off.

Well, I was talking specifically about odors you can distinctly "smell" even when they're obviously not there, but I suppose "what do you remember when you smell something) works too.


I get the workshop thing too; whenever I smell sawdust (and that's pretty often) I remember working with my grandpa when I was pretty young.

Whenever I smell gunsmoke, all I can think of is fireworks on a hot summer night, off the dock at my family's lake cabin.

There are a few smell-triggered memories (as well as a few event-triggered memories) that I cannot (or maybe just do not) recall unless the trigger is present. A few minutes later, I'll forget what it was, but with the trigger, it's as good as a holographic reproduction of sound, sight, and sometimes other senses.

I occasionally get a whiff of something that really isn't there, but in my mind that's not much different than thinking you saw something out of the corner of your eye or thinking someone called your name when they didn't.

My girlfriend...

I love her scent, but I only get to see her once every week. I smell her a lot more often than that, though... sometimes I'll be dressing or something and suddenly the air will fill, and I'll get euphoric and start daydreaming.

It's the same way with campfires and the smell of the kindest of buds, but not near to that extent.

Stop taking so many drugs. :D

I also have some weird smell experiences sometimes. Occasionally with remembered smells wafting around, or with a smell that just triggers a deeply-set memory (just happened the other day while shopping actually).

I've noticed that I smell things sooner than other people I'm with...like the time I was at work emptying the change from a soda machine and smelled smoke...he thought I was nuts until a wire burst into flames.

Sometimes I'll catch a faint whiff of a dank, damp smell and it automatically conjures up the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland...ahh memories.

As far as "ghost smells" go...I occassionally smell things that I don't think are really there.

you know that burnt rubber smell a vaccum cleaner can give off (usually when the belt its about to go) thats what I smell when I have a migraine comin on

The part of your brain that processes smell is directly linked to your memory centers, so smells often will bring back very specific memories, and memories can often include smells.

I worked as a cashier in a supermarket one summer at the beach. At each checkout next to the register were rows of candy and chocolate bars. The distinctive smell was not the actual chocolate but the wrapping used for the candy and chocolate. Sometimes I will be nowhere near a candy wrapper and I will catch a whiff of that fresh, new smell and it will take me right back to that supermarket at the beach.

I read a book on the Immune system *which i cant find for the life of me* that explained that the immune system has a memory of its own and whatever you are around for long enough becomes imprinted in it and is therefore part of you forever. The scientist explained that as another of the reasons of human bonding is that if you are around someone enough then their smell becomes imprinted on your secondary memory. I have no memory if he stated that this extended to hotdogs or nail guns, but nontheless its something interesting that i would like to read more on.

Certain floral scents remind me when I was a teenager and performed oral sex for the first time on my first girlfriend. She had the most wonderful smell of flowers all the time.

Unlike my next girlfriend who,..woooweee just didn't have the same thing going on. Tried it once. Really tried hard to get past the aroma but eventually bailed when the tip of my tongue started to burn.

I'm pretty sure I've heard from more than one place that scent is the strongest sense associated with memory.

The smell of listerine... my best friend was completely obsessive about his breath and carried a travel flask of listerine with him so his breath would always be minty fresh. The smell would enter a room often before he did, every so often I will smell it and I swear I expect Tom to be standing there...

Ok, I feel SOOO much better now - thought I was the only one who was reminded of Pirates of the Carribean. I have a tendency when I am missing something to feel like I smell something that I associate with the missing, even if it's not really there. Gotten me strange looks a time or two.

amonkie....even though it's not the best smell in the world...it brings up good memories so it's a smell that I enjoy :)

The smell of dove soap reminds me of weekends spent at my Aunts farm. The smell of mint & chocolate takes me back to my Grandparents house when I was very young. Grandma always gave us an after-eight wafer when we would go. And when I would miss my husband I would sniff the can of Gillette shave gel that I kept for months after he passed.

The smell of Aussie Moist reminds me of my lover...so does the Adidas deodorant he wears. Over Christmas break I would go and smell the deodorant at the store because I missed him so much. All of the products he uses on his body--the Aussie Moist, the deodorant, and Dove soap--combine with his body chemistry to create this unique smell that only he has. And sometimes, just walking along, I'll catch a whiff of something that morphs into that smell for me.

Mmm.

There are perfumes that old lovers wore that will trigger memories of them... I will be out shopping and someone will pass wearing that scent and all my memories of that person will come flooding back... It is one of the coolest things about our physiology.

Giorgio. Any time that I smell it I am instantly reminded of a certain little redhead that I used to...know, before I met Mrs. O'Rights. Fortunately, Mrs. O'Rights neither likes nor wears Giorgio. That wouldn't be good. That wouldn't be good, at all.

The smell memories that intrigue me the most are the ones I can't quite remember. The ones that are so familiar, but I'm just not sure what they're from.
Interestingly, when you said rubber bouncy ball, I knew the exact smell you meant.

Oh, and here's one I wonder if anybody else has noticed.. Some outhouses (not porta-potties, outhouses) smell like cherry coke.. I shit you not.

There is a reason why smells are so closely related to memories. In the brain, the part that is for smell recognition is right near the hippocampus, which creates and stores memories. So the fact that they are in such close vicinity to each other creates these "smell memories" as you call them. It really is an amazing thing

But sometimes it makes you want to cry. Especially when every time you turn around something you smell reminds you of someone you don't want to be reminded of anymore :(