Straight through your nose to your neocortex, no waiting!
 

Oh my god, Oh my god , OhmygodOhmygod. I just signed a lady up that smelled exactly like my maternal Grandmother. She's been dead like 20 years or something. Smelled like what she smelt like when she was alive, that is, before all you wiseacres get going.

my office still smells like Grammy. wow.

That's very cool.

Funny thing, how scents make us remember things so strongly. Was it a perfume or 'her'?

perfume. nasty old musty stuff.

I forget where it was that I heard it - but olfactory memories are stronger than any other type in the human mind. (Something tells me it was Alton Brown, but I'm not positive today).

Hopefully all the memories are positive and the office scent isn't freaking you out too badly. :) (if it is, febreeze works wonders!)

My mother-in-law used to wear this stuff . . . it didn't smell that bad, but I swear I could feel it crawling between my eyeballs and my contacts. I eventually prevailed on Mrs. Dallas to give her a private word about it. ("Steve is far too polite to say anything about it, but he has some allergies that are aggravated by any kind of perfume . . . ")

I walked into the smell of my classroom when I was 8 years old the other day. I think it was a mixture of votive candles (at the shrine to the Virgin obviously) and old lady perfume. It was wonderful.

I wasn't aware they had built me a shrine.

Sorry, just call me Ms. Obvious Sacrilege today!

Smells invoke the strongest memory because of their specificity, IE there is no approximation for a smell. Sound (waveforms) can be reduced to digital steps, as can visual data, reduced to pixels, but olfactory data runs on a "dictionary" system: this exact molecule docks in this exact receptor, and it sends a unique signal to your brain, there is no substitue.

Incidentally, it is theorized that the "dictionary" system of smells gave rise to our spoken language, which runs on the same "this means that" platform. Best factoid about that theory: we have a special category of "bad words" which desribe smelly things (sex, fear, fecal matter).

Evening in Punxatawney : it's what all grannies got for Xmas this year.

My Mum is wearing Jean Paul Gaultier Classique right now. I wonder if in years to come my niece will consider it a typical old lady smell...

Funny, there was about the same age gap between Nan and me as there is between Mum and niece, and yet my Mum isn't nearly as.... old. Did people age differently because they'd been through the war or something?

if you didn't do it in the 'bad place' everytime, it wouldn't be as smelly, ya know.

Is this really true? Or is it a perceptual difference on your part?

Oh, and Jim . . . who said it was "bad"??

Next time I see niece I'll ask - although she's 12 and keen to please, so I might not get her true feelings.

I'm basing it on the things Mum does, compared to Nan. They are closer in type to the things I do and my niece does than anything Nan used to do. Mum I think it's attitude - Mum is open to new things. Food, places, technology, people etc. She embraces life.

Nan just used to stay at home and clean from what I remember. She would tell you all about what a hard life she'd had, but even as a child it didn't sound that hard to me - Mum worked harder and for longer, had more children and less family support.

Meh - maybe that's one of my fears, that I have Nan's genes and will eat myself up inside with bitterness if I start with the self-pity.

Oh, and it might not be bad, but goodness me - it can smell afterwards... You just get browned meat, we get squelchy farts that smell like wet dog.... TMI?

It's starting to look like there's no such thing around here! :p

no,no.....that's definitely right on the edge.

nice thread drift. Grammy would be horrified. and i started it. oh, the shame

Meh, I just caught your drift is all.
Anyway, what would Grammy expect from a thread that started, "Oh my god, Oh my god , OhmygodOhmygod."

My husband once decided to try a different deoderant--same brand, just a different smell in their line. But it happened to be the same deoderant an ex used to wear, and the minute he walked out of the bathroom it freaked me out. I made him throw out the entire used-only-once stick.

I think you mean straight to the hippocampus - part of the limbic system - the ancient and most primitive part of our brain - where our inner caveman lives.

That must have been freaky. Same thing happens to me with certain scents. It hits you at a very deep level.

I feel the same way - I think its cultural or societal - my parents are in their 70's and go skiing for 2 months outta the year. My Grandparents were more stay at home types and all I remember Gram doing was cooking and cleaning. Then again maybe it is our perspective thats changed. *shrugs*

Nose-stalgia.

thank yoooooo, mr smartiepants. of course i meant hippopotomus. what else would it be? googlejerk.

There are some colognes that still take me back to moments from High school. I use to wear Clinique Aromatics Elixer and whenever I catch a whiff of that, it pulls all sorts of weird feelings in. I can't really access the memories, consciously, but I feel the way I did when they occurred.

Wee?

My MIL has just stopped smelling of her perfume and started to smell like wee unsuccesfully disguised by perfume (it doesn't help that she's changed her pefume from something bearable if not "me" to something cloyingly reminiscent of toilet air freshener spray on special at Kwik Save).

I wonder which of my darling children will comment first? Or perhaps they'll not notice and in 30 years time, they'll walk past a urinal and get all nostalgic?

Or perhaps they'll just go post about it on some message board.

Don't be silly, message boards will be relegated to virtual museums by then.

(I do love my MIL btw, but it was a long week when she was here.... a little catharisis goes a long way ;))

Of course we have, Shawnee, and we're waiting to decorate it with pictures of your, you know, special purpose.

That's what I was expecting from LJ. "It smelled like Grammy - used diapers and drool!". Thank goodness it was the cologne.

Cut grass in August always reminds me of high school football camp.

The weirdest one for me was the smell of the foam we used in a school production of Bugsy Malone. The Physics & Design students made the splurge guns, so I have no idea what was used.

The smell wasn't strong, but it got everywhere as most people were covered in it every night (not me - I was Blousey :angel:) I smelled it quite distinctly in a sports/ camping goods shop a couple of years ago. The effect was immediate - in my mind I was in my school hall on a winter's evening, excited and scared. It made me feel so lightheaded I left the shop - I wish I'd tracked down what it was.

Funny - I had forgotten about it until I read Case & Spexxvet's high school related posts.

One of the weirdest things for me was when my dad had his last (fatal) heart attack. By the time I got to the hospital, he had already died. At one point I wanted to be alone with him to say goodbye and when I leaned down to give him a final hug, I could smell his cologne. He only ever wore one. I remember just lying there, breathing in his scent, knowing it would be the last time. I have never smelled it again, but if I do, I'll probably burst into tears just from the memory.

I hope you can smell it and just remember how much you loved him. But as I had tears in my eyes just reading your post I think you're probably right. Sorry for your loss.

There is an asphault plant right out side of the gate of Paris Island ( USMC boot camp ) Still to this day ( 20 + years ) when i have to work in an asphault plant a keep waiting for a Drill instructer to come around one of the tanks !!!!!!
And Jim I know what you meen about the granny smell , My Grand Mother made Drapes and Roman shades , and her house smelled of fabric ,
My mother ALWAYS had Channel #5 on , I can't smell it with out thinking of her

wtf

stfu

lol

FA-Q II :eyebrow:

But never mind the remembered perfumes -- every now and then you come across somebody whose body odor is simply... wonderful. Straight from their whatever through your olfactory bulb to neocortex down to your frisky-bits. And trying to describe this odor, except to say "It's human," is foredoomed.

Given half a chance, I'd likely have loved that young girl in that doughnut shop, but no -- I was engaged elsewhere, recently married in fact. There was never a word between us, never a look, but oh did she smell goooood.

Congrats UG

It was the powdered sugar.:D

Heh... no it wasn't :D... doughnuts flavored with what I was smelling might be popular at orgies, but I don't think we'd ever see 'em in a family doughnut shop.

yeah, I can smell horny, too. that is.....i can smell when a woman is ....horny. i don't know if I smell horny. I can't smell myself.

It smells a little bit like chewed steak. trust me, i'm never wrong.

Some would smell like that... and a human-type musk.