The nose knows

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We all have certain smells that can take us back to a moment in time.  Bread baking in the kitchen, fresh turned dirt in the garden – the list goes on and on.  I am usually prepared for these smells when I am where I would expect them, but the other day threw me for a loop.  I was shopping at a large local grocery store and I grabbed a stick of gum, because I was too hungry to shop intelligently.  I rounded a corner in the health and beauty section and there was a display of Jergen’s Hand Cream and a nice older woman handing out samples.  The way my heart stopped, you would have thought that my mother had appeared from heaven right in front of me.  The combination of the spearmint chewing gum and the lotion was the exact smell of tissues handed to me as a child from my mother’s purse.

I immediately felt like an 8 year old little girl, as so many thoughts and feelings came rushing back to me.  I could see my mother, wiping my face, right in front of me.  It is so odd and wonderful how our minds work this way.  My mother has been gone for 25 years, but her vision was just as fresh as if she were here now. 

I picked up a tube of the lotion and noticed that the label said “original scent”.  Boy, were they right.  Back in the day, there weren’t as many choices or “flavors” of lotions as there are today, so I can only imagine that this is a scent that many of my fellow AARP members would remember as a comfort scent.

When my grandchildren’s generation is looking for comfort smells, they will have to conjure up melon-berry-razzle whatever.  There will hardly be any “original” scent that will work for that entire generation, except maybe microwave popcorn.

All this company has to do to sell a tube to every baby-boomer with great olfactory senses is to have a nice, older, preferably white haired woman stand in every store and wave that magical “original scent” around.  They may want to prepare the nice older lady for the occasional tears or hugs that she may have to handle, but as long as she is the real deal, she should be able to cope – she probably has a tissue in her purse if needed.

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