The other night at work, I was carrying a hot laminator, looking for a place to let it cool, when the scent of hot plastic sparked a white flash of memory.
Instead of standing at a table in a Manhattan building with an increasingly heavy machine in my arms, I was sitting on the floor of a video store in a small town in Missouri. During the first couple of weeks of my first, non-babysitting job, my co-workers and I prepared the shop for it's grand opening. In a strip mall less than a mile from my parents' house, we mass-produced VHS boxes for display, using blow dryers to heat shrink wrap around the Styrofoam-stuffed cardboard. I took a lot of care to fold each corner so it tightened neatly. As we worked, the smell of hot plastic hovered over us.
Question - What sensory stimulus has recently evoked a long forgotten memory for you?
Every time I smell Pinesol, I'm taken back to grade school when the janitor was cleaning up where someone had thrown up. Talk about strong sensory input.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I've noticed that my olfactory memories tend to be more neutral (like the one above) or negative. :-) I'm not sure why.
DeleteInteresting. I'm going to have to think about that.
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