Scented Memories

If I've learned one thing from TV commercials, I've learned that scent is the strongest sense tied to memory. (Thank you Old Spice! (Why is it that I mention deodorant again in a blog entry?))

Unfortunately, my sense of smell is strong enough that I can remember things (read: smell things) from great distances.

Today, I was in the computer lab for an hour or so just killing time between scheduled events, when someone walked by me. She was wearing my first girlfriend's perfume. I am not good at describing smells, but I can usually identify them -- through other smells, no less. (Y'see, to me, smell is a three-dimensional thing. In fact, I've been told, 'if my dog could talk, I bet he'd talk about smells like you do' before.) But this smell was the unmistakable scent of a perfume from The Body Shop, which I grew to love.

I never told my then-girlfriend, but I wasn't the biggest fan of this perfume at first. But after the first few times she wore it around me, it grew on me to the point that it was the unmistakable smell of being in love.

All it took today was a girl walking by me -- fast enough that she was out of the room or sitting down before I could see her -- and then later on the air circulating the room for me to be thrown back to 2005 when I last saw her (and smelled her) when she told me that she was happy to be able to wear it again; that she'd stopped wearing that perfume after we broke up and she was glad we were together again so she could use it up -- and maybe buy more.

I wonder if she still has any and if her now-finance has ever smelled it on her. Or if it has the same memories for her as it does me. Or if she's been able to reassign its meaning from one connected to me to one connected with infatuation.

I wonder if she threw it out or gave it to her little sister.

And most of all, I wonder if I'll ever be able to smell it and not be thrown back to the period of time I was with her from 2002 to 2005. Or better yet, just forget what it smells like.

But there's yet to be a TV commercial to teach me how to forget; only how to make someone remember me: Fresh Sport scent deodorant!