11.73 scents that remind me of something.

I just recently attended a conference at Loma Linda University Medical Center on trauma and how to respond to it. One little fact that I learnt while attending was that smell makes the largest memory markers in our brain. What that means is that, just like a song taking you back to a time or place when you were younger, smells do that too but to a much larger degree. I don’t know much about that because it was just a bunny trail that the speaker when down for a few sentences, but I do know this, certain smells or scents cause me to think of specific people or events. (Hey that rhymed). Here are my top 11.73 scents that remind me of something.

1. BBQing steaks: This reminds me of my dad. I can picture him coming home, firing up the grill and getting ready to burn some meat. Those were good days.
2. Leather: This reminds me of my mom’s 1973 Lincoln Town Car. When they brought that car home brand new I was 8. I remember sitting in it for hours pushing all of the buttons and adjusting the mirrors. I remember treating it like it was space ship.
3. Finger nail polish remover: My sister. Whenever I smell it in our own bathroom now it takes me right back to the house I grew up in. I had to sharing a bathroom with my sister.
4. Dry erase makers: 1989 Ty Sells and I ended up in Washington DC to conduct a youth training. We were staying at a large hotel and used a conference room for the day with about 150 kids. The students were broken up into groups of 10 and given a pack of dry erase markers to do art work, graphs and a variety of other jobs. By the end of the day that aroma was stuck in my nose. Even to this day whenever I have to use a marker it takes me right back there.
5. Gasoline: My very first car. My dad and I went into Mexico and purchased a 1957 Chevy that had been used as a chicken coop. We limped it back across the border and worked on it all summer long. It was cherry when we sold it 4 years later. Every time we would work on it we would end up smelling like gas.
6. Cow manure: This one is a little sad. One of the ways the bus took me to get to my middle school, way out in the country, was right past the Orita Calf Lot. We would go through there early in the morning and you could smell that place miles away. I always wondered how people could live there.
7. Chinese Fried Rice: Reminds of the song, Hotel California by the Eagles. My folks and I use to go to a restaurant in Brawley and it was called the Asia Café. They had great food but not a very good selection on the juke box. My pop would give me a stack of quarters and I would play that song every time we went there.
8. Hot car brakes: Driving down the road from Big Bear California. I never told Kris this but our brakes got really hot and mushy. I thought we were going to go over a cliff. I was a ball of nerves while my beautiful bride slept soundly in the passenger side of the car. Yes, I did stop and let them cool off.
9. Polo Cologne: This reminds me of the care free summer of 1986 with Kris before we were married. I remember going to a shopping mall in Diamond Bar and buying the cologne, along with everyone else, and the Polo soap on a rope.
10. Seaweed: My brother Henry. We spent many a summer, as a family, on a private beach between San Diego and Tijuana. There was always sea weed on the shore when we would go for walks. We would talk about everything and nothing at all for two weeks. What an amazing life I have lived.
11. Clove Cigarettes/Shakey’s Pizza: I remember one of my first days after graduating high school a friend, Dave, and I went out to Shakey’s for a see-you-later-lunch since we wouldn’t be hanging out much now that we had graduated. We talked about the future and what we would do with our lives. After lunch we hung out in the parking lot while he smoked a clove cigarette. We had been really good friends in school and I really liked the guy. He helped me make it through my senior year at a new school. Somehow I knew I would never hang out with him again after that day. Years down the road he took my ticket at a movie theater where he worked in Riverside. I said “hey” and asked how I was doing. I said fine. When I came out after the movie he was gone.
11.73 Windex. It will always remind me of the third year I went to Vegas with the guys. 10 of us guys were packed into 2 adjoining rooms. I ended up on this air mattress with another guy for the night who, all night long continued to….