Smelling Your Way Through Life

If the only sense of the five you had were smell...how would you fair in life? 


I'm pretty sure I would be pretty battered and bruised, if not dead. I've always had a fairly heightened sense of smell, to the point I can only make a lap around Bath & Body Works before I have to exit. I hold my breath if I need to purchase something. I will purposely go out of my way to avoid the section of the mall that Abercrombie & Fitch is in. I get a headache just thinking about it. 


That being said, I love how smells are so intricately tied to memories. For me, there's no other sense, even sight, that can cause me to recall every feeling, thought, and image of a given moment. 


There's a perfume I asked my mother to quit wearing because she wore it to the funeral of one of my high school classmates our senior year. I suppose I cried on her shoulder and inhaled quite a dose of the perfume. So, every time I smell it, I remember a funeral that never should have taken place. 


The mix of horse sweat and leather. This one probably sounds odd to most, but for me, it reminds me of summers spent riding for both pleasure and for competition. When I finished riding, a saddle blanket soaked in sweat meant that I had spent a lot of time doing something I enjoyed, and my horse got a good workout. 


The smell I encountered this morning is what inspired this post. I have no clue where the scent actually came from, but memories of my internship at a children's hospital, and the kids I worked with, came rushing back. It's the smell when I would first walk in in the mornings...part breakfast still lingering after trays had been taken down the hall, part rubbing alcohol, part plastic and rubber from the latex gloves and various syringes, tubes, etc... It makes me wonder how those kids are doing, and if some of them are even still with us (I worked with several kids/adolescents with cancer, Cystic Fibrosis, kidney failure, and anorexia). Although I didn't care for my internship too much, I enjoyed my time with the patients and their families, and I hope they felt the same.


On a lighter note, I feel that there needs to be a section in all Freshman orientation classes about air freshener in the workplace. There is a precise ratio of air freshener to foul odor that should be achieved without going over. If the ratio becomes too great in favor of the air freshener...it might have been best not to use it at all. Don't get me wrong...I don't care for foul bathroom odors any more than the next person...I just don't get the feeling that inhaling them will increase my chances of getting lung cancer three fold as I do with air freshener. {stepping off of soapbox}