It just doesn’t make scents.
When I was young, when I started shaving, I never used any sort of aftershave, other than witch hazel. Dad the same, though he occasionally used Aqua Velva, because my mom liked it. Mostly, dad smelled like Alberto VO-5.
Scent is a powerful memory trigger. Trouble is, not all those memories are always pleasant. We have a lady at work who wears a lot of very expensive perfume. And it smells great on her. But once in a while she wears white diamonds, which I think smells like raid, not because it does but because my ex used to wear it, and with her body chemistry it was awful.
I also work with Asians, many of whom consider strong scents offensive. So I try to settle for being clean. Partially because I don’t like strong scents myself (I wear Drakkar at the wife’s request when we will be going to an event) at least part because I don’t desire to be affiliated with someone’s bad memory of someone who wore that scent in their past.
Still. There are scents I will always remember. The smell of fabric softener and bleach, the smells that remind me of the first woman I went out with after my first divorce. The smell of my first one and only new car that I ever owned. The smell of vanilla, the smell in the room where the Ogwife and I stayed on our wedding night. The salt smell of the ocean. it helps a lot to be able to soak in these smells when your own stink is not overpowering.
12 comments Og | Uncategorized
I’ve noticed that fabric softener is the scent of choice for many people these days.
Like you, I prefer the clean approach and wear Old Spice for the wife.
And only her.
With the wife’s allergies, I’m now to the point where I don’t even use any deodorant. I use one of those salt blocks that kill the bacteria, so that you just don’t smell at all. I’ve come to find out that once your olfactory nerves recover from overdosing yourself in scent, you tend to smell other aromas a bit stronger.
Well, that, and the women around here bathe in perfume. Gack. The only real problem I have with men is the middle-eastern folks, who still haven’t gotten used to the fact that bathing regularly means you don’t need to wear an entire bottle of cologne before going out.
The smell of rain on hot pavement.
The smell of freshly mown grass in the morning, particularly when someone else is mowing.
The smell of the cotton candy machine at a fair.
The smell of a barbecue restaurant that has an open pit instead of smokers.
The smell of a blossoming orange grove.
The popcorn smell of a movie theater.
The smell of freshly caught fish.
The smell of fallen leaves in a wood on a dry day in the fall.
There’s more, certainly, but that’s all I can think of at the moment. :)
These are all good, but there’s one that’ll age us as surely as rings in a tree:
The smell of fresh, hot popcorn, soon as you stepped foot into the Sears Department Store.
And yes, I agree. Less is more. And it’s getting ever more difficult to find a shampoo that’s relatively free of excess ingredients and aromas.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
One of my favorite quotes: “That’s a nice fragrance, madam, but did you have to marinate in it?”
On smell that’s a big memory trigger for me is getting a whiff of burning IMR4064 while shooting.
Takes me back to my early 20s when I first started dating my wife and was getting introduced to long range rifle shooting and NRA Highpower competition.
White Diamonds, hah. I call it White Lightning.
The woman who is now my wife wore White Diamonds when we started dating. Which coincided with massive attacks of migraine on my part. I finally figured out that I was allergic to most artificial scents (vanilla is about the only one I can stand), and she was good enough to stop wearing them.
To this day we give a wide berth to Yankee Candle stores and perfume counters. And my incidence of migraine, which started in my teens and got to twice a week (or more) in my twenties and thirties, has dropped to two or three a year. (Of course some of that may be due to me taking 1000mg of naproxen daily for arthritis…but I’ll take what I can get.)
Diesel… when I smell it my body vibrates like it did the night we slept next to 16KVA diesel generator before we deployed to the Caprivi Strip in 1976.
The cleaning solvent we used to wash our aircraft with. Was first exposed to same while stationed in Iceland in the mid 70’s, I was in my early 20’s at that time. Fast forward to the late 80’s, now stationed at NAS Pt. Mugu CA, now in my mid 30’s. Caught a whiff of that same solvent being used on our aircraft there. The years just fell away…I literally felt like I was back in my early 20’s… the fatigue washed away, the shoulders squared up, spring retured to my step…quite surprising what smells can trigger.
As to perfumes…there was a scent my Dad’s mom wore…and I will forever tie it in with how she smelled while lying in repose…everytime I catch that scent from one of the customers at our store…it causes me to think of The Reaper…morbid to be sure…but scent association does that I guess.
À la recherche du temps, that’s for sure.
That fresh cut grass smell, especially in summer … which thanks to PBS and the Nature program I now know is the grass crying out in agony. Now I feel guilty, even if I didn’t cut it.
The smell of racing fuel … that always stirs my senses and means it’s time to GO! And probably alwyas will.
There was this man … and I loved everything about him, including how he smelled, which was this wonderful cologne. Everything about him was wonderful until it wasn’t. It’s been a whole lot of years but even now I’ll smell it out somewhere, someone in a crowd, and even though I know he’s nowhere in the vicinity and not studying me, dammit, I look for him. And it all comes back to me, every moment, every feeling, the passion and the beauty and the pain and the grief. And I let him go all over again.
That sweet smell of puppies … and you play with them and it gets all over you and you just smile because they’re so sweet and silly and fun.
And best of all, always … the smell of tomato vines. Almost better than tomatoes themselves, it’s so good.
Jenny
I wish the young Asian lady I sat next to last week shared the concept of strong scents being offensive, she not only had the most eye-watering perfume I’d ever smelled, she apparently applied it with a garden hose.
OTOH (where I have different fingers) I love the smell of a summer-rain, that kinda wet earthy smell. And the ocean, which brings back memories of going surf-fishing with Dad when I was a yute.
It took a while for my wife to stop putting those plug-in smelly things in the kitchen. When I’m cooking I want to smell the food, that’s my first line to tell if it’s seasoned properly, and taste is largely smell anyway. I don’t mind them in other rooms (as long as the scent isn’t too strong), but hate them in the kitchen.
The smell of the stripping room when we were taking tobacco down from the barn. Every once in a while, I catch that cured but otherwise unadulerated tobacco smell as a note in a ladies perfume.
The hot smell of burning Kerosene. reminds me of the back ramps of military aircraft with blades turning.
There are some perfumes that smell like insect repellent to me. I’m not sure which ones. I thought it would be rude to ask. i had to share an office once with a woman who wore such perfume and she wore it strong. I had to move. And all the women in the office hated me after that for being so insensitive.
Middle eastern and Asian people wear lots of cologne and perfume to cover up body odor. They never invented deodorant and don’t see the point of it. Eastern Europeans don’t even bother with the cologne. In Bosnia, I could smell the Russian tent from 100 yards away.