I want to shed light on something that I feel goes unnoticed day to day and really deserves more credit than it gets…
The nose.
Yeah. You heard me. The cute little snot machine smack dab in the center of your face. Just hear me out, okay?
My nose literally has a better memory than I do (I might as well be a goldfish when it comes to what I ate for dinner last night.) But that’s because our noses basically do have their own memory. Olfactory memory is the “recollection of odors” according to our handy dandy Wiki. Here is a quick little recap I found from an article that sums up the science nicely:
“Incoming smells are first processed by the olfactory bulb, which starts inside the nose and runs along the bottom of the brain. The olfactory bulb has direct connections to two brain areas that are strongly implicated in emotion and memory: the amygdala and hippocampus. Interestingly, visual, auditory (sound), and tactile (touch) information do not pass through these brain areas. This may be why olfaction, more than any other sense, is so successful at triggering emotions and memories…” (Lewis, Psychology Today).
Are you ever just minding your business, doing your thing, when all of a sudden BAM - you are hit with the smell of something that immediately takes you back 15 years? Was it a laundry detergent? Someone’s perfume?
For me it was the smell of hose water. Over the past few days I have walked by numerous lawn sprinklers or people watering their bushes. The warm, stale, mineral-ly scent of the water takes me back to when I was a toddler.
My sister and I would run around in our front yard with diapers on (for the time being) through the big yellow sprinkler that hooked up to the hose on the side of the house. Oh how young, wild and free we were. Actually, I think the song Young, Wild and Free was written about us at that very moment - I could be wrong though, maybe someone can fact check me on that.
My nose also holds some pretty strong grudges against smells that it remembers...and doesn’t like.
It remembers that one time when my friend had a camping themed birthday party and gave out lollipops that were marshmallow flavor...I can still smell it in my head. Makes me nauseous. But happy birthday and thanks for inviting me!
It will also never, ever like cheese or dairy products. I don’t even know if there was ever something that specifically happened that made me hate the smells of those foods, but I just do.
For example, when my family puts grated parmesan cheese on their hot pasta, I gag. Literally, the smell makes me gag. Greek yogurt? Forget about it. I have video evidence of this if anyone is interested. The cheese aisle at the grocery store? I have to HOLD MY BREATH. I promise you I am not being dramatic. There is just something about it that my nose has always hated. It’s honestly very inconvenient, but hey, that’s me!
Putting the cheese on hold for now, in all seriousness, I think it’s really incredible how our memory works that way. I love how certain scents are associated with different people or memories in my head. Here are some examples:
Kai fragrance - will always remind me of my grandma
Men’s Speed Stick deodorant - will always remind me of my dad
Hot pavement - sitting and waiting for my mom after a scorcher of a preseason session
Santal Vanilla Voluspa spray - smells like my freshman year as a whole - can’t describe it
Chloé perfume - my bat mitzvah
Hose water - playing in the sprinklers when I was younger
Mom’s homemade Chex Mix - Thanksgiving morning while watching the parade
Hairspray that I don’t know the name of - getting my hair done for prom
Neutrogena Grapefruit face wash - summer camp when I was 13
New carpet - my grandma’s old apartment building
I’ve spent so long trying to think and come up with examples. It’s hard to think of them when you try, but when you smell whatever it is, you immediately remember and you know. It’s kind of magical. What smells are associated with your life?
Me and my purple, pink and yellow nose back in high school at a Color Run event