Smells like September 11th

This one of those posts that I've been thinking about for entirely too long. I've delayed posting it because 1) I feel like I have only so many pre-thought out posts and 2) if the posts sucks then well, if the pre-thought out posts suck then what about the ones I don't put any thought into? Part of the reason that I am finally (as if this blog has been going on for decades!) writing this is because of the post here.

I am struck by how much smells are tied to one's memory. There's some cheesy commercial for deodorant or body spray that has a tag line that goes something like, "Scent is the number one sense tied to memory." I'm not sure if I really buy into that because one of the earliest memories I have is when they came to pave my road (Joy Lane) in front of my house in West Virginia. I remember the sight of this event, but not so much the smell. However, there are lots of different smells that will trigger very vivid memories for me. Sometimes a woman will walk by wearing a perfume of a former girlfriend, or I will smell honeysuckle and that will remind me of the summers down the street at my friend's house. Because of its omnipresence, the smell of cigarette smoke will remind me of bars in Europe. One smell that I will never forget is the smell of September 11th. I was fortunately not in the Pentagon at the time of the attack, but I was a couple blocks away. You could clearly smell the uniqueness of it while outside, but eventually you could scent of it seeped back into the "vault" that I worked in at the time.

One of the remarkable things about scent is the ability to unearth memories that are so buried that they can only be recalled by a particular smell. Also, I think it is interesting that there are smells that you won't even notice are there until you've returned to that particular place. I bet you going home is kind of like that for almost everyone. When you walk through that door, there is a smell that sometimes can't even be described, that just smells like home.