Have you ever noticed how a smell can immediately to transport you back to an event, place or circumstances where you first encountered it? I think that it has long been recognised that out of our five senses, smell is one of the most powerful - particularly in evoking memories.
I had such an experience of this effect last night when I was washing my kids, when I opened a tube of soap i've not used before. It was Mr Men soap - and it had a peculiar fruity smell. It immediately reminded me of my first flight to Russia on an Ilyhshin 76 Aeroflot flight in 1988. I can't recall exactly what the source of the smell was on the plane (because I don't think I knew at the time), but I attributed it to the smell of the free fruit drink served on the flight - it was billed as "lemonade" but it neither looked nor tasted like lemonade - it was a dark colour which made it look more like apple juice. It was either that or the fuel smell in the fuselage, or perhaps both. I dunno, but I was immediately taken back to that flight as soon as I smelled this soap.
I used to work at JFK and Pan Am serviced Aeroflot. I know that smell. I never did figure out where that smell came from but thought it was some Soviet cleaning fluid.
ReplyDeleteThanks for you comment. Thinking about it, it probably was Soviet cleaning fluid, although some might have unfairly compared the "lemonade" with cleaning fluid
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