#58: "Ooh that smell"

One of my earliest smell memories from childhood is not a pleasant one. It's kinda tough to describe, but it is certainly one of those smells that once you know it, you know it anywhere. To this day I can be driving down any highway with the window down and catch a whiff of that somewhat sweetly putrid but not totally rotten egg smell and tell you that there is a paper mill nearby. Growing up in the small town where I did it wasn't out of the ordinary for a particularly overcast day with the wind blowing just the right way to push the smell of paper mill across the entire town.

Back then I felt like I had a pretty tough sense of smell. That smell of paper mill never bothered me like it did others that I shared car rides with. The smell was just normal. Once we moved to the country the smell of skunk wasn't anything special anymore, and while unpleasant still isn't even enough to warrant a remark.

When I was a teenager I used to work on the trash crew for the local town festival every September. We had to wear these fluorescent pink shirts so the festival organizers (led by my mother of all people) could find us and tell us what to do. The smells of festival food are still good memories - funnel cakes, roasted peanuts, various meats on sticks, the first spiral fries I ever had. The crew spent the entire weekend walking around the festival just making sure the garbage cans weren't full. What was at once wonderful fried smells became hot, wet, mixed garbage, in time.

During these same years, the scout troop I was a member of did community service by picking up garbage on a local highway. The first few times we did the work it was particularly disgusting, as no one had ever really picked up that trash and things had been dumped there for decades. These work calls were the first times I'd encounter the wonderful smell of decomposition, and to this day I still don't know how it didn't bother me. I don't look forward to smelling it again. 

I will always love the smell of baking things, especially pizza. The smell of brewing coffee is enough to start waking me up with anticipation. I have a bottle of beard oil that smells like campfire and I like it, but it's nothing compared to the real smell of smoke. I still love the smell of hot oil in a fryer, even if I never really want to work that station. Onions and peppers being sautéd is delicious.

Yet recently I discovered a smell I cannot take. It's so bad that I keep thinking I smell it like a phantom scent. I took laundry out of the dryer and thought I smelled it. I sat at the dinner table and thought I smelled it on everyone. For a while it lingered on the upstairs floor, hiding behind closed doors ready to strike. Even sitting here writing this I remember it as if I'd just discovered it again anew.

Fred woke himself up last night crying. I went to comfort him, and something just didn't smell right. One hour, one bath, one bed stripping and clean sheets, and one entire family wardrobe change later, all the child vomit that had erupted from my kid was a thing of the past. 

Until I smell that vomit smell again...