It’s a haunting and rather beautiful thread, just to read though and see what may trigger some bad memories for people. I look at the items, and try to wonder what may have caused the bad memory, but it’s more poignant by the fact that we don’t reveal what they are either.
That said, it’s also REALLY depressing for me to read it- just knowing there are things I like and enjoy, but may have tragic or saddening memories for others.
So this is the anti-matter thread to that one.
Rules are the same as the other Thread- just post your innocuous items, but ones that stir up warm and positive memories for you. And you don’t have to put down what the positive memories are, just the things that trigger a smile or a happy memory.
I’ll go first:
*
Stairway to Heaven*
Steve Miller Band
Sherbert Ice Cream
Watching the Sun rise with flecks of orange, pink, and purple in the sky
Watching someone waterski. Many, many of the happy memories of my life revolve around lakes, and boats. For some reason the sight of a waterskiier just makes me ridiculously happy. I’m too old to ski anymore, but the sight of someone doing it makes me smile for hours.
Cherry Coke
“Space Oddity” by David Bowie
Martinelli’s apple juice, in the little apple-shaped bottles
Dryer sheets, and the smell of fabric softener in general
Seeing the full moon through tree branches, especially palm trees
Veggie pizza
[ul]
[li]lilacs, honeysuckle, blossoming cherry trees[/li][li] recliner chairs[/li][li] green tea[/li][li] brand new pool toys in plastic packages, waterslides, snorkle sets, swimming pools[/li][li] bright red ladybugs (but not the orange ones!)[/li][li] kittens[/li][li] blue paint, blue carpet[/li][li] a fresh, unopened bottle of lotion[/li][li]butter cookies, ripe avocados, bright red homegrown tomatoes[/li][li]rainbows. RAINBOWS!!! And double rainbows make me about 100 times happier (it’s not a linear relationship at all, a triple rainbow would make me explode into happiness confetti). One time I saw a double rainbow at work (only the second one I’ve seen in my life) and it was very difficult not to squee IRL. <3[/li][/ul]
I could go on all night, really.
I like rainbows just because they’re pretty. I’ve seen a few double rainbows, and saw a triple rainbow once, which was absolutely amazing. The third bow was very faint, but it was there.
And I’ve always loved the smell of vinegar, because when I was a little kid, the Easter egg dyes had to have vinegar as a component. I enjoyed decorating and dying the eggs, and the smell of vinegar always takes me back to when my siblings and cousins and I were gathered around a kitchen table, dying eggs.
I love magnolias and mimosas, both sight and smell of the flowers. Last year, my husband put in a magnolia tree for me, and it survived that nasty drought we had. This year, it bloomed. When I was a kid, we had a mimosa tree in the back yard, and I used to climb it constantly. It had very convenient forks, and I’d climb that tree and just lounge in it, enjoying the fragrance. And when it went to seed, I used to gather the pods and break them open and collect the seeds, and try to figure out how to drill holes in them so I could use them as beads. Magnolia seeds are very attractive, by the way.
May with birds singing at their full fury in the mornings. I don’t care if they wake me up early, it’s spring, it reminds me of when school let us kids out and life was loud for everyone (probably including the neighbors.)
The smell of laundry detergent. It tends to indicate something in the house will be clean.
Spanish Moss. It reminds me of visiting relatives in Florida when I was a kid and too young to realize that grandma wouldn’t live forever and one of the aunts had a serious mental problem.
Watching the sun rise over Boot Hill in Tombstone AZ. There’s no reason for that, I just found it cool.
For me it’s the smell of cigar smoke – I’ll call this innocuous because I’m thinking a whiff of the smell rather than choking clouds of second-hand smoke.
When my mother’s side of the family would get together for Christmas, after the meal had been eaten and colourful wrapping paper strewn around, my grandfather and uncle would each have a cigar. Neither of them smoked usually; that smell is purely “Christmas” for me.
My mother and Grandad are gone now, and I haven’t seen that uncle for many years (distance and a falling out on that side of the family), but catching a whiff of cigar smoke brings back good memories of Christmas past.
Getting up an hour (or even two) before sunrise and hitting the road in the car. Even to this day if I do it it feels like I am going fishing (which we did frequently when I was a kid) or going on a long road trip (which we did a couple of times a year).
I haven’t fished in decades and most of my early morning car jaunts are not long road trips…but when I get in the car that early in the morning…well thats what it feels like.
Things with accidental faces (you know, where the arrangement of knobs and vents on a vacuum cleaner makes it look like a grinning idiot - that sort of thing)
