There’s this thing about me and my nose. It’s forever blocked and perpetually wet, well slightly runny but not like a dog mind you, yet I always notice smells. May it be the smell of the neighbour’s Compost, someone’s signature smell or perfume, or just the smell of my bed sheets after a long day. And the thing is, its a normal thing to relate to things with your sense of smell, as it triggers a part of your brain which remembers it somehow. Its a wonder how much Bill Nye the Science Guy’s facts at the age of 7 can last till your nearly fourteen.
The irony is that never have fully realized these things until I was in tuition the other night. The class was held in the living room of the teacher’s house, or second house as I was told. The lights were bright blue flouroscent hues, somewhat reflecting against the whiteboard while my tutor boomed about negative signs.
And then I realized, there was a soft smell in the air. I don’t remember what the scent was called and is, but all I could remember was that it made me feel good. It made me feel welcome somehow, yet before I can fully get accustomed to the ever fading wifting smell, the clock strikes ten and my date with integers are over.
Smells don’t last yet they still strike you somehow. Just like the smell of my daily shampoo used during the holidays in 2003 still make me feel 12 again, for some reason, it puts me in that state of mind of complete ease. Yet once the bottle had finished, another trip to the Pharmacy for another one proves unworth it as even the spirits of scent can’t be ressurected again.
The end of 2003 was a nice time, I spent my still as death Ramadan at home staring at the screen discovering new things while the smell of my father’s perfume somewhat froze in the scorching hot and slow midday. Its something hard to pinpoint on that time, probably something like Jason Mraz said about eating and sleeping just living and learning the ways. But this was better, for at 12, your mind is at it’s peak, ready to absorb anything in it’s path.
Theres this bright orange lunchbox in my house that I brought over from UK when I was a little kid. It had a white handle and tiny thermos inside. On the front of the thermos and lunchbox, it had an illustration of a cartoon made famous on BBC that time called The Animals Of Farthing Wood. The thermos is the typical kid thermos you would get at the age of four. You would have to unscrew the cup from the bottle, then unscrew the corkscrew to pour your drink into the cup, drink, then screw them back together in opposite direction of openning it.
I had always brought that lunchbox to kindergarten during my time there, with grape juice in my thermos. A ripe soft smell I can still smell till now after countless of times of being washed and used back in primary school. But even then, the smell is still there as I sneak into the store room and unscrew in delight. And for a moment, it felt like every little drop of my childhood was in that thermos, in that abstract scent of grape juice.
But then, grape juice doesn’t smell like faded dishwashing liquid too does it?