The Power of a Scent

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"What scents immediately bring you back to childhood?"
There is a quote by Diane Ackerman that is so true.

"Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains."

For me, there are so many scents that immediately transport me to other times and places.

• Coppertone suntan lotion - It has to be Coppertone, because that's what my mom used to slather all over us at 5:00am the mornings that our entire extended family headed out for the lake. My grandparents had a boat and a camper, and the whole family (my parents, my sister, my two aunts, and my grandparents) would go camping for the weekends. Some of us would sleep in a tent, some in the camper, and my aunts would sleep in the boat. It was always fun to watch the grown-ups water ski building pyramids and stuff. I always thought my family was SO COOL. :-) And whenever I get a whiff of Coppertone suntan lotion, I always think of family camping trips.

• This leads me straight into Noxzema - After several days at the lake, you tend to get a sunburn no matter how much Coppertone your mom put on you. I have never been able to use Noxzema for its intended purpose of facial cleansing because I always associate it with the excruciating pain of a bad sunburn. One whiff of the stuff and I tend to cringe.

• The ocean - There's nothing like the smell of the ocean! And try as they may, candle and air freshener manufacturers just can't seem to harness the scent. :-( Personally, I think they have neglected to include the rotting seaweed and seagull poop in the equation. Yeah, it sounds disgusting, but if you ask me... That's all part of what makes the ocean smell like the ocean.

• Honeysuckle - When I was a little girl, we had a honeysuckle vine in our backyard that was also mixed with blackberries. My little sister and I would always "sneak" back there to pick berries and honeysuckle flowers because we weren't supposed to (there were bees), but I have a feeling my mom knew what we were up to. Mom's know everything. To this day, the smell of honeysuckle makes me smile and feel like I'm getting away with something. :-)

• Hay, horse poop, and wood shavings - I know, I know... It might not sound appealing to a lot of people, but I love the smell of being in a barn! It reminds me of my Grandpa Jim. If a heart can smile, that's what mine does when I smell a barn. It just makes me think of happy times. And if you mix the barn smell with my Grandpa Jim's cologne, it's even better! :-)

• Perfume-maker smell - Growing up, I had a little toy perfume maker. I would spend hours mixing the perfect fragrances together. Granted, they all smelled exactly the same... Kind of like flowers and soap mixed together... But I thought I was really doing something special. And the funny thing is, every once in a while, a woman will walk by wearing what I would swear is one of my perfume creations! I guess I should have patented them. I could be rich! :-)

I have a lot more (ex. cherry tobacco, smoke, roast beef, Drakkar Noir), but these are the big ones. What about you? Are there any scents that immediately bring you back to childhood or take you somewhere else?

Most Memorable Childhood Books

I just realized that I haven't done a Journal Jar question in a while. Here's a good one!

"What were some of the most memorable books you read as a child?"
Reading and books have always been a big part of my life. One of my favorite things to do as a child was to lay there every night while my mom read a chapter out of one of the Little House on the Praire books.

 

As I got older and began spending more time reading on my own, my mom let me have all of her old Trixie Belden books from when she was a girl. Those were the best! I'm dying to track down the complete collection somewhere so I can have it to pass down to my kids.

Then I graduated to the Nancy Drew Case Files. My best friend and I were hooked! She had a huge crush on Ned Nickerson, and I was always amazed at how the seasons seemed to change, but Nancy stayed the same age. :-)

I loved to read! In fact, I would hole up in my room for hours just so I could read a book in one sitting. My parents always used to joke that grounding me or sending me to my room wouldn't be punishment at all. They would threaten to ground me to the living room. :-)

There were quite a few other series that I liked, but Little House, Trixie Belden, and Nancy Drew Case Files were the big ones.

The Runaway

"Did you ever run away from home?"

Most children threaten to run away at one point or another. Their parents make them do something they don't want to do, or they don't get a particular toy that they really, really want... I, however, had a different approach. I was smart enough to know that I wouldn't make it very far out there on the streets. As my niece has said, "But who's gonna take care of us?!? We're just little kids, you know!" So when I got really mad at my parents, I locked myself in the bathroom with all of the things that I considered to be necessities to live.

 

Yep... I would make a big deal out of how angry I was by not speaking a word as I moved one item at a time into the bathroom. My pillows. My blanket. A book. A glass of water. A bag of potato chips. The cat. His litter box was in there, so I wanted to make sure he was taken care of. :-) The TV. I wasn't stupid. If I was going to be alone in the bathroom for the rest of my life (or until the toilet paper ran out), I needed something to do! And after I had moved in everything I could possibly think of that would sustain me for life, I walked in and locked the door.

I would settle into my makeshift bed in the bathtub to read, and usually after about 5 minutes or so I'd think of something extremely important that I had forgotten to move into my new home. I knew I couldn't leave though. Not after I had just spent over an hour moving in and having the ceremonial "locking of the door..." I refused to give them the satisfaction. I was way too stubborn for that. What was I going to do?!? Thank goodness for little sisters. "CHRISTY!!! I NEED MY ALARM CLOCK!!!" She, of course, being the dutiful little sister would bring it to the door for me. I would crack it just enough to pull in whatever item she was bringing me (or have her slide it under the door if it was small enough) and lock the door again.

Yep. I showed them! They'd think twice before doing whatever it was that made me angry again! What was it that they did again? Why am I mad? I'm kind of hungry. Man, this is boring. That catbox stinks. This bathtub's hard. My butt hurts. How long has it been? 20 minutes? Yeah... I think that's good. :-)

The Journal Jar

I changed my mind and decided to post my Journal Jar entries here on I Must Be Trippin' too so I wouldn't have to deal with multiple blogs. What is a Journal Jar, you ask? Well, my cousin made homemade Christmas gifts this past Christmas, and one of them was a Journal Jar. It's basically hundreds of random questions and topics to give you a starting point for your daily journal entries. I LOVED the idea, and thought I'd carry it over to my blog. It's a great way to discover little-known facts about your family and friends, and can be saved for future generations.

"What was your first paying job?"

I always tell people that I never really had a "typical" job as a teenager or in college. I never did fast food or waited tables at restaurants. I don't really have the personality for it. I think the first time someone would have said, "Hey, Miss... My coffee's cold," I probably would have told them where the coffee pot was located and what they could do with it when they found it. :-) The only time I ever attempted retail lasted about 4-6 weeks in college. I worked in the Children's Department at Mervyn's during Back-to-School season. If that's not enough to send a person screaming in the opposite direction, I don't know what is. Retail was not for me.

I think my first paying job was working at the dentist office with my Mom when I turned 16. They had me cleaning instruments, developing x-rays, sending out mailings, cleaning the office, etc. ...pretty much all of the stuff that no one else wanted to do... :-) I really liked it though (except for the part where I had to clean out the suction traps at the end of the day. All of those tooth bits and nastiness... YUCK!). But the best part was that I only had to work about 10-12 hours a week and made the same amount of money that all of my friends made at their 20-hour-a-week fast food jobs. (They didn't like me much. :-)

I worked there for about a year when my Aunt Linda asked me if I'd be interested in coaching gymnastics at the YMCA. Heck, yeah!!! That's a COOL job, and I was good at it. I ended up coaching from the time I was 17 all through my early college years. It's good money, that's for sure. At one point, I was coaching at a nearby club about 30 hours a week around all of my college classes. I was in awesome shape... I was very bendy too. :-)

Throughout the "early years," I had all sorts of jobs. I worked at the dentist office. I coached gymnastics. I helped my aunt coach PE at a private school. I did after school care at the YMCA. I worked summer day care. I did private tutoring. I gave beginning clarinet and flute lessons. I answered the phones and did some billing a couple days a week for my uncle's piano tuning/moving company. I've even worked in several libraries (It's easy to get on at a library if you've ever even been inside of one before. :-)

I think the busiest I ever was happened around the time I was 20 or so. I had about 15-20 hours a week of gymnastics classes in the mornings, some late evenings, and Saturdays. I did after school care at the YMCA another 15 hours a week. I threw in about 6-8 hours a week of private tutoring and clarinet lessons. And my aunt and uncle let me hang out at their house and answer phones for their company a couple hours a day in between my morning and afternoon stuff so I wouldn't have to drive back to the dorms (It was very nice of them to basically pay me to do my homework :-). Crazy busy, but again, the money added up. Especially because I didn't have any free time to spend it!

I love that I never had a "typical" job when I was young. I was certainly busy, but the variety made the time fly, and I love working with kids. I kind of miss it. :-( I'll definitely be one of those PTA moms. Shoot... I'll probably be the president of the PTA knowing me. I don't do anything half-way! :-)