I Love The Way That Smells!

Yesterday, as I sat in the waiting area at the hair salon, I over head the three young ladies behind the desk talking. One of them was just returning to her seat from a trip to the printer. In her hand she held a stack of newly printed sheets of paper. She held them up to her face, inhaled strongly and then said “I just love the smell of freshly printed paper!”

I smiled. It made me remember those days, long, long ago and the mimeograph machines! How the teacher would come into the classroom, fresh from that secret hiding place in the school where they kept the machine. In her hands would be a stack of papers with the distinctive blue ink shining brightly, all of the pages slightly damp, the corners curling up just a little. As the teacher walked down the rows between our desks she would hand out each new paper to a student and inevitably every single one of us would raise that still warm sheet of paper to our nose and inhale whatever chemicals were used in making that blue ink! Oh the good old days!

I still love the smell of paper too, particularly old books. Nothing sets the butterflies of excitement fluttering around inside of me any faster then walking into a library, used book store or an antique shop and inhaling that distinctive smell of musty old books! It’s like I’ve entered paradise.

I came home from the salon and decided to ask the internet what were some other smells that people enjoyed that might be considered odd. I mean we all love the smell of laundry hung on the line, fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, freshly mowed grass, the air after it rains. But the smell of chemically treated or musty paper was slightly different, what else was out there that people liked the smell of? As you can imagine the internet did not disappoint. Some of the smells I found out there I also like, others I could not, in any way shape or form see how someone would like them. I’ll give you an example and then we shall never mention these again. Armpits, Bare Feet, Blood, Bodily Gases (burps and otherwise), Ear Wax and the most puzzling of all, Belly Button Lint. I’m not even going to ask who actually figured out Belly Button Lint had a smell. I’m just going to put these all in the “gross” category and move on.

Then there were others that I personally don’t find enjoyable, but they weren’t down right gross. Skunks for example. Or Wet Dogs and Old Coins. I’m sorry, the idea of smelling old coins just makes me think of the thousands of dirty hands that have probably touched them. There were some questionable food smells like Steamed Broccoli or Canned Tuna. I get it, those have a smell, but for me personally, they wouldn’t be considered enjoyable. My personal favorite in the not gross category but still questionable was the smell of Home Depot. Seriously I’m heading to Home Depot after I write this just to see if the place really does have a smell of it’s own!

There were a lot of chemical smells in the line up and it really made me realize, from a history of humankind way of looking at things, how so much of our world is full of chemicals now that we find their smells enjoyable, almost comforting! Clean Fresh Air was not on any list that I found, but people do like the smell of Bus Exhaust, Gasoline, Chorline Bleach, Rubbing Alcohol, Ammonia, and Sharpie Markers. Unbelievable! In this category I did find one smell, Plastic Inflatable Pool Toys, that I could kind of understand where the enjoyment factor comes from. Clearly holding an uninflatedted beach ball close to your face as you try to blow it up is going to invoke some childhood memory of summer days at the pool or lake. So that one I can understand.

There were also some chemical type smells on the lists that I actually enjoy myself, for the same childhood memory factor. Dishsoap, specifically for me it would be Palmolive Dishsoap, which I do not buy as I like another brand better, but I have been known to pop the top of the bottle in a store and take a good deep sniff! My mother used Palmolive Dish Soap and every time I smell it all I can see is that old porcelain sink in our kitchen, with the window facing the back yard and a happy childhood. Instant time travel right there!

Another chemical type smell on the list that I fondly remembered when I read it, but I actually haven’t smelled in years, is the smell of a fired Cap Gun. Remember that smell? That was a great smell! We never really had cap guns as children, instead we’d buy just the strips of caps and sit on the sidewalk with a rock and bang away at each little black spot on the red strip of paper. When the rock finally caused the chemicals inside to spark and “fire” that little whif of smoke that curled up toward us smelled so good! It was the same with Pencil Dust, another fond chlidhood memory. Remember when it was your turn to empty the pencil sharpener in school and you stood over the trash can to dump it and let all of those lead and wood particles float up into the air and straight into your nose. Good memories!

Some on the list did bring back really strong memories. Pipe Tobacco being one. I grew up in the 60’s & 70’s literally everyone around me in my young life smoked cigarettes. The gray smoke hanging in a room or the collection of novelty ash trays are never far from my mind’s memories. But it was pipe tobacco that elicits the strongest reaction in me, as my grandfather smoked a pipe. He was amazing, he wore a hat every time he left the house. He was a very stylish man who had grown into his adulthood, and therefore his style, in the 1930’s and 1940’s. He was something special as he allowed me to crawl up into his lap in his recliner, while he smoked a pipe and I dipped into the candy dish he always had nearby. Sadly it was the smoking that took him early. He had a massive heart attack and died at age 65, which honestly now doesn’t seem that old!

But of all the smells, gross, weird or otherwise that I read about yesterday afternoon it was pheromones that grabbed my attention. You know that scent that each one of us has. It’s primal of course and obviously there for a reason. But in humans it is less understood than it is in animals. In the animal kingdom it helps mothers find their babies, aids in identifying friend or foe, and most importantly it aids in the procreation of the species as a basic attraction mechinism. But humans aren’t necessarily attracted to another person based on pheromones, or someone’s smell. In our modern world we are more likely to check and make sure someone visually meets our requirements, are they physically attractive? Or intellectually? Can they carry on an intelligent conversation is far more important in today’s word then if someone’s smell matches your own chemical makeup. Modern humans don’t cling to other humans based on smells, or do they?

I think back to all of those giggling teenage girls that ran around in high school wearing their boyfriends sweatshirts! Even the women’s clothing fashion design “a boyfriend shirt” indicates that women love wearing clothing that belongs to another human. Preferably another human they have felt attracted to. Something that carries the other human’s scent. So whereas the scientists may say pheromones aren’t completely understood in humans, in practice I would say they are alive and well in some form!

As I sat and thought about this it reminded me of my grandmother. She died in 2012 and many of her belongings were boxed up in plastic totes and stored in my attic. One day, after she had been gone many years, I needed to find an old photo that I knew was in one of those plastic totes. So I walked upstairs, found the shelf, found the tote I was looking for and popped the lid off. Immediately the smell of my grandmother filled the air around me. I was shocked that the items in this tote, a mix of her old pocketbooks, cloth hankies, photo albums and hand written letters would smell so strongly of her! I quickly shut the lid so as not to lose my grandmother’s smell. I opened the lid only slightly a second time, quickly grabbed the photo album I was looking for and snapped the lid shut. For weeks afterwards I would go up to the attic and open the lid just enough to stick my nose in and smell my grandmother. It was such a comforting thing! It was like she was right there in the room with me.

And you know, given how my life has unfolded in the past year or so….who’s to say she wasn’t there with me, right? Anything is possible!