Fall is a season of unexpectedness. You fall in love, fall in a pile of leaves, fall into your routine after the summer off. You pull out the fresh crayons and notebook paper, and the scent of a new textbook tickles your nose.
When I was little, computers and printers were still a distant dream. Teachers used typewriters or handwrote everything, and if it needed to be copied, they didn't use xerox machines, either. Instead, the teachers made a stencil copy of whatever they wanted printed. They then attached this stencil to a large machine called a mimeograph machine, with a big, round drum that turned with a handle that you cranked by hand. I used to love the smell of a handout that still had the scent of the ink embedded into the paper. The ink was always a faded blue, and the paper, if they had just been made, would still feel a little damp. I hated the work that the freshly mimeoed sheets meant was shortly to descend upon me, but I loved the smell, anyway.
The smell of a new textbook always reminds me of my fall birthday. Each year, I would go back to school shortly before my birthday arrived, and by the time the bloom was off the books, it would be time to celebrate. Having a fall birthday when you are young is sort of like having a consolation prize for having to start school for another long year of learning. You don't like it, you aren't happy about it, but at least you get presents.
Although most people love the scent of freshly baked bread or a fresh pan of cookies, I love the scent of a new doll. Sometimes, when I walk by the toy aisle even now I will step in and take a whiff of the plastic ambrosia, and be transported back to childhood in my own personal time machine in my head.
Fall has a scent all to itself, as does spring. Spring is the smell of rain and fresh flowers and trees in bloom. Fall is the crisp smell of apples ripe for the picking and drying leaves falling on the ground. The grass has lost its lustre, and the flowers are somewhat wilting and tired looking. They are ready for their long winter's nap, and you are ready for the smell of a fall thunderstorm to clean the air and clear out the pollen, bringing the crispness that signals the holidays are not far away.
Schools have a peculiar smell, and it's not just the kids, although they don't help. I have never walked into an elementary school that didn't have the same strange odor. I don't know if it's the cleaners, or the wax, or just that kids are sweating it out over learning, but you could blindfold me and drop me into a fourth grade classroom and I could tell you every time right where I am.
Christmas trees have the scent of winter and promise and holiday joy. If you think joy doesn't have a scent, smell a pine tree, and you will see what I mean. They have tried to bottle it, they put it into candles, they put it into floor cleaner and wood polish. But the unfortunate truth is that you can't bottle the smell of anticipation, and that is the promise of that irresistible scent.
New puppies have a fresh baby smell to their breath, and it's intoxicating to dog lovers. And human babies have their own scent, too, although it's usually not as sweet. I have read that a human baby will turn toward it's own mother just hours after birth, something that surprises no one, I'm sure. But what may be surprising is that research has shown that mothers also recognize the scent of their own babies just after birth, as well. Although it could be dismissed as a simple evolutionary mechanism to ensure the survival of the smallest members of society, it's also a lovely sign that mother and baby have begun bonding within minutes of laying eyes on each other.
When we are ill, our noses are often the harbingers of trouble, and it's always disheartening to find that we cannot breathe or smell through them. My nose, through the simple scents it breathes in, can instantly bring childhood back, or a happy moment with a new puppy. I have retained in my memory scents and smells that can take me to another world, or another time, or another place.
We have learned to harness the amazing sense of smell in dogs, and we use their sensitive nostrils to do everything from find disaster victims to explosive devices, drugs to avalanche survivors. Their sense of smell is far heightened from our own, and they are constantly distracted, noses to the ground, by their obsession with the smell of absolutely everything.
So one is then forced to wonder, as I did today, why is it that they look for the most pungent smells, the stronger the better? This is one of life's little mysteries that I would like an answer to. If only because of a certain dog that ended my long day with his need for a bath, precipitated by a little roll in the grass that ended badly.
