Scent from above

Human brain (actual size)

I don't have a really good sense of smell about me, and a lot of people are going to remove "of smell" from that phrase, but I am no bloodhound.  I mean, if you're baking olive-garlic-parmesan bread within ten feet of me, I can pick up that scent, and don't even try to tell me there are more than two fragrances for men.  There is English Leather, worn by me since the first time I dragged a razor across this old mug, and then there is Drakkar Noir Musk McGraw, which outsells my brand by a hundred to one, but what do I know?  Apparently, I enjoy smelling like a belt.

At this time of the year, I enjoy shopping for Peggy, and I love to see the various perfumes being sold by actors, actresses and singers.  Britney Spears! Paris Hilton! Shakira! Alan Cumming! Faith Hill! Avril Lavigne!  Bruce Willis!

Oh well now, I mean, really.   Bruce Willis cologne? Is this where the mad merry-go-round of life has spun to a stop, an area in which people say, "I want to smell like Bruce Willis!"?  Yippee cay-ay-ay!

If you have a bottle or an atomizer or a 55-gallon drum of this fluid, could you please take a small piece of paper, douse it with the cologne , and then not mail it to me?  


Actually, they might have had a better product to sell if they gave it a name.  Britney has Fantasy Midnight, Hidden Fantasy, Curious, and Curious in Control among the many scents available in her name.  Bruce should have labeled his mansmell "Smirk by Bruce Willis."  

But, even though I'm not great at picking up scents in the air, when I DO smell something, it often brings up memories.  The most recent example of this is that the custodians at work must have gotten a new cleaning fluid to use in the men's rooms.  All of a sudden, it smells like the lavatories at my dear old elementary school in there!  Kind of a bleach-y, piney fragrance.  


The scent of the floor wax in the long long corridor of justice where I went to work at my first county job is still the same after all these years, and even though it's not even an emergency services location nowadays, I still feel like a rookie when I walk down that hall.

Having a McCormick Spice plant up the road a piece is interesting, because if you're downwind of it early in the morning before the carbon monoxide washes it out, you can tell what's going on up there in Spicetown:  garlic, oregano, basil, the dreaded anise, or Old Bay.   Can't smell the first three without thinking of pizzas.  Anise is like when someone fooled you by claiming that licorice is candy, which is like yeah, if liver is meat.  And Old Bay - King of Spices in Crabtown - will take you back to any time you took the mallet to a dozen hardshell beauties.


And really, who can smell beer spilled all over someone's upholstery or t-shirt, and not think of high school days?