A student in class was using Icy/Hot (it’s own post…) which has a very potent pepperminty-chemically smell. All of a sudden I was back at Camp during workweek cleaning the bathrooms. The smell was exactly like the smell of the abrasive cleaner we used to clean the sinks and other surfaces in the bathroom. It was one of those times where the memory hit me before I even had time to figure out why it popped into my head. Before I knew it I was listening to country radio, singing along, and scrubbing sinks in the boy bathroom with friends. To the maintenance truck! Very weird.
Our kids have a penchant for all types of cheap knock off cologne and perfumes that they buy at the corner stores here and literally slosh all over themselves. As a consequence my classroom sometimes smells like walking into a skanky Sephora knock-off store. One student had just doused himself in a new scent that I hadn’t smelled before and when he walked in the aroma immediately sent me back again. I had a vision of play-dough flowers where the dough smelled just like that cologne. At first I felt that this was not a real memory, and somehow my brain was making this up. I didn’t really have any recollection of making these play dough flowers. But as the day went on, and the scent lingered in my classroom I slowly had a few more threads of memory drawn out of my brain and I realized what it was I was remembering some sort of flower making basket toy. Lo and behold, when I got home and Googled it I discovered the "Flower Making Basket" and upon seeing it totally remembered playing with it. What. The. Heck. I had no conscious memory about this, I think if anyone would have asked me about it before I wouldn't have recalled the memory. The power brain is pretty much freaking me out. What other memories are stored in there that my consciousness can only recollect with a trigger? Also, does my longing for home increase the strength or likelihood of these flashbacks?
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