Monday Memories--The Best Smell in the World is . . .

Today I went to Wal-Mart to get cleanser, bleach and soap. As the cashier rang up my items she picked up a can of Comet cleanser and said, “I love the smell of this.” I asked her if that was what her mom used when she was growing up and she said it was. Then she continued, “She was a clean freak and used lots of bleach, too. I like the smell of bleach as well.”

We used Ajax growing up, so Comet doesn’t trigger anything for me, but her comment made me think of childhood smells and the memories linked to them:

Pink gum erasers—my friend, Anita, had pink gummy erasers and I loved smelling them. Whenever I smell one, still, I think of Anita and our inseparable grade school and high school friendship.

Floor wax—the last thing we did when we cleaned house was to wax the floor. We had to stay off of it for 20-30 minutes until it dried, so floor wax says “the work is finally done.” Definitely a good smell. Or it reminds me of the first day of school after a long break when the janitor had waxed all the wood floors in the building

Novocaine—reminds me of the dentist. The dentist reminds me of cavities which reminds me of milkshakes. Pavlov’s theory—novocaine = food


Plastic—My doll, Judy

Green Palmolive dish soap—washing steers at the fair for 4-H. Before we discovered the cattle shampoo of Orvus, it was us, the steers and a bottle of dish soap.




White Shoulders perfume—Grandma Julia’s red bathroom that always had a fancy box of scented powder with a fluffy applicator



All these things conjure a memory for me. How about for you? What smells trigger memories for you? Did you know these interesting facts about smells?

1. Humans are able to distinguish over 10,000 scents.

2. Each person (except identical twins) has his or her individual smell.

3. One in 1,000 people are insensitive to the smell of skunks.

4. Smell is 10,000 times more sensitive than taste.

5. Ninety percent of what is perceived as taste is actually smell.

6. Ninety percent of the women who were tested identified their newborns by smell after being exposed to them for only 10 min-1 hour. All of the women recognized their babies' smell after they had been exposed longer than 1 hour.

7. By as early as 3 days a baby can discriminate between his own breast-feeding mother and another lactating mother.

8. Women, particularly women of reproductive age, have a more acute sense of smell than men.

9. Dogs, horses, and women can detect the "scent of fear." (Female subjects wore underarm pads while watching a scary movie or a neutral movie. The pads were presented to a panel of women who were able to discriminate between "fear" and "non-fear" sweat pads. )

10. We tend to prefer the smell of people who have different smells to our own and tend to be repelled by people whose smell is similar to our own.

11. A Chicago lab found that the women in their study rated human odor more pleasant than common household odors.

12. Around $24 billion is spent annually on scented products in the US.

13. People are very sensitive to the smell of green pepper. It can be detected when it is mixed with air at only 0.5 parts per trillion.

(This information was compiled by Tim Jacob jacob@cardiff.ac.uk)

I’d love to hear about a smell and memory of yours in the comments.