A Stink Bomb of Memories

It is amazing how smells can bring back memories so vividly. You get a wiff of a fragrance and memories explode in your mind, just from a brief moment of scent. There is a certain flavor of chapstick that transports me back to a vacation in Florida the moment I smell it. I am back on the beach walking along in the freezing cold waves. When I get a sniff of baby shampoo I immediately think of the guinea pig I owned when I was around twelve years old. Although he was usually quite stinky due to the fact that I was lax on cleaning his cage, whenever he got a bath, I would smother him in baby shampoo and he would smell sweet and clean. His cage, on the other hand, was a different story. The smell of pine brings back a night when I was a little girl and we were setting up the Christmas tree that we had bought earlier that day. My parents were out in the garage and I was sitting on the ground in the living room with my older sister surounded by toys and pine needles. Sawdust reminds me of a summer day when I was playing in a pile of sawdust that was left after my dad had cut a lot of wood. Thankfully, all those smells bring back pleasant memories, but there are some that make me cringe. Last summer I declared war on some earwigs that had decided to move into my flowerbox. They were eating my plants, so I decided to try a remedy I had heard of. I sprayed them with a mixture of water and dishsoap. Amazingly, it worked and the earwigs ran of of their hiding places, shriveled up, and died. However, whenever I wash my dishes I now get visions of the earwigs coming out of their holes, which is not exactly a very pretty sight. It all just goes to show that, as Helen Keller once said, "Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived." How very true.