This was brought to mind when I was reading the “High School Movies” thread…
Have you ever been mentally transported back to your childhood/school days?
I was watching a Spice Girls video one day a year or so ago (don’t ask…it’s just what was on) - it was the one where they are on some weird desert - I think it was Will You Be There or something similar…
About half-way through the video, I felt like I was about 13 or 14 again. Really, as if my brain had squirted out the exact chemical mixture I had sloshing around 16 years ago. I wasn’t actually thinking of the song at that point, but of some other “important” song from that time in my life - maybe “Angel” by Aerosmith or some such.
It was a little creepy, but mostly very cool. And it made me a little sad that I was so far removed from a part of myself…
I’ve never had that, but I did have a funny dream recently where, due to some unfortunate clerical mishap, I had to go back to high school and retake a couple of classes. But in the dream I wasn’t a kid, but rather my present age which is 49. It was odd…it so happens that I live next door to my old HS IRL, and I was happy about the fact that for once in my life I could walk to school.
Anytime I walk barefoot on grass when the air is chilly, I’m transported back to middle/high school playing football in my friends back yard. Good times.
All the time. I’ve been reconnecting to some music that I listened to in my youth, and it takes me right back. And lately I’ve been thinking about kindergarten and some of the kids that were in my class.
The smell of diesel exhaust and the sound of a bus engine running take me back to the cold, wet Novembers of my high school years. I even remember the red hoodie I wore as I carried my uniform and gear to my bus before we left for contest. It’s both a good and an aching memory.
Funny how it’s the little sensations that bring it all back. A certain level of morning light, on a really overcast day, with light rain, if I look at a red brick wall, takes me right back to my first day of first grade in a new town.
Every time I go past Yonge and St. Clair, I’m thrown back to my middle school days; I keep thinking “If I just turn left down this street here, and go past the corner store / Subway sandwich place, and cut into the alleyway past the parking lot…”
I’d picked up a small package of Frito’s when I stopped for gas on the way home about a month ago. And for some reason the taste reminded me of a very specific day from my childhood. I can remembered the moment with amazing clarity which is odd because I can’t remember last week with amazing clarity.
I remember I was 5. I was eating lunch on the little wooden picnic table my dad had built in our back yard in St. Peters Mo. It was a warm summer day. I was all sandy from having played all morning in the sandbox (also built by my dad). My mom had brought out a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Frito’s and a glass of cherry Kool Aid. I recalled how strong the Frito’s tasted after every bite of the sandwich. I was both glad for the food and impatient to get back to playing. For a few seconds I was a child again with no greater worries than what game I would play next.
The smell of cut grass and gasoline on a hot day brings me right back to mowing the lawn as a teen. The smell of a garage brings me back to sitting in my workshop building a model as a kid.
I was transported back to my childhood just this morning.
There was a car TV commercial on and there was a wife giving her husband a large chunk of asphalt with a bow on it for Christmas. The jest was that now your hubby can own the road. Dumb I know.
Anyway, as I was letting the commercial sink in my BF states “I got a rock” which plunged me back to the days of watching the Charlie Brown holiday specials. We waited every year to watch them and the other holiday shows. I can’t remember the last time I watched one.
Maybe this year I will make an effort to tune in an watch one or two of them.
I spent my early childhood in West Texas, but haven’t had an occasion to be out there since I was nine or so. Last year I had to visit a company in Snyder, Texas. I pulled the car over as I was driving one of the long, deserted roads and got out for a minute. Once I smelled the sagebrush it was as if I had just transported to the early '60’s.
On warm spring evenings when the spring peepers are peeping, I am always transported back to high school. Every spring I was in the school play, and we were always in rehearsal when the spring peepers were out.
Similarly, the first humidity free fall day always reminds me of the band contests we traveled to nearly every Saturday. There’s no mistaking that smell in the air – of the lack of humidity, and the sweaty wool uniforms we wore!
All the time! Though I’m strangely afflicted that way.
Frequent ones: Mothballs remind me of my grandmother. She had them stashed in all the closets of her house, and eventually there was always the slightest whiff of it in the house all the time. The click of a Zippo lighter reminds me of the many years my father smoked, the same with the smell. Garage smells remind me of my grandfather’s garage, which we spent a lot of time in. Songs from the early 90’s to the early 80’s take me to a specific time.
Unusual: My great grandmother wore a German perfume, Tosca. I have a bottle the I take a sniff of from time to time. While out shopping last week, a woman walked by and she was wearing that perfume. Took me right back to sitting in my great grandmother’s living room getting M&M’s from her pheasant candy dish and sipping a Coke.
When we were visiting my parents and going through some old stuff in their attic I found some old vinyl albums and and my portable record player.
One of the albums was the Beatles Abby Road and I told my wife how I must have listened to that album over 100 times when I was around 6 or 7 however I always listened to it at 45 rpm because I liked the way it sounded (like the chipmunks). She promptly put it on at 45 rpm and I sat there like a deer caught in the headlights transformed instantly backwards 30+ years. Surreal.
(She thought I was completely nuts.)
Well, not so much childhood, as first few weeks of college.
I was at my University for a football game a while ago, and poked my head into the dorm I lived in. The peculiar smell hit me like a sledgehammer- I remembered all sorts of stuff from the first 2-3 weeks of my freshman year of college.