The effect of a smell

[Alan]

Hi,

Are you affected by smells? I'm talking about pleasant odours of course and what I am asking is whether just the mere smell of something can transport you back to some event in the past. I'll tell you what I'm on about. Yesterday I was wandering about some soulless retail park when suddenly my nostrils were assailed by the smell of candyfloss that was offered for sale at a nearby booth. This sudden infusion took me back to the time as a student when I'd worked during the summer vacation as a stall attendant on a pier on the south coast of England. Does that happen to you ever?

Alan
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[Ralf]

Hi Alan,

It does happen quite a lot. There are smells that trigger some long lost memories of primary school gyms whenever I walk into a public building (it has to be the vinegar-based cleaner) or the sudden whole-body (pain) experience as you walk past a dental surgery that has its windows open. And I'm sure that the smell of candyfloss may trigger similar associations for some. Caries, filling, burrrrrrr.
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[Jamie (K)]

One one crisp autumn morning I was nostalgically transported back to the resort town where I once lived in the Czech Republic. The trigger was the aroma of sausage cooking somewhere mixed with the smell of diesel exhaust from a truck. Neither one of the smells would have affected me by itself, but the combination brought back potent memories.

The other smell that transports me is that of a woman's body odor mixed with perfume. In the United States, people try to eliminate the smell of their bodies, so that one either smells nothing at all or only their perfume or aftershave. In many other countries, the body odor isn't suppressed but simply mixed with perfume, which creates a smell that is not unpleasant. One smells that aroma so seldom in the US that when I pass near it, I'm always filled with some memory or other.

I have read that many instances of déjà vu, far from being mystical phenomena, are simply the result of a subconscious smell trigger.

[NinaZara]

Last week I was packing my things that I am sending back home and I smelled this smell that reminds me of my baby sister's favorite pillow. She doesn't let my mother wash it, but my mother washed it anyway, whenever she was not around. Funny enough, the pillow has the smell back in no time. I really don't hate the smell, it smells like old things. She even has a name for it, Gulinku, literally my "My pillow". I remembered giving up my favorite pillow at the age of 17. So I think it's going to stay with her for another 4 or 5 years. But my other little sister brought her favorite pillow, Red Bean all the way to Kuala Lumpur, making me wonder if she's going to bring it to Ireland too. I wonder what smells it would have by then! I really think it's time for her to give it up.

I wonder what we call this kind of attachment in English. I just call it a favorite pillow.

[Alan]

Hi Ninazara,

The expression I know is 'comfort/blanket/pillow' or whatever. I remember that well from my own children when they were young.

Alan
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[Jamie (K)]

In the US we call the blanket a kid won't give up a "security blanket" or a "blankie".

[Alan]

Hi,

Yes, so do I. 'Security' was the word I was looking for, thanks. That's what comes of answering too early in the morning!
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[NinaZara]

Thanks, guys. Although ours were never a blanket, it was either a pillow, with weird shapes, or a teddy bear, that looked so scary because it only have one eye left and no nose and mouth anymore.