Boxwood - I mean the shrub, growing - reminds me of Grandmother’s house and the wonderful summer weeks I spent there.
Crayola crayons and Play-Doh are sort of evocative. But then probably everybody who doesn’t have kids right now probably gets that.
The smell of waxed nylon cable tying cord makes me wax nostalgic for my first real professional job.
Patchouli reminds me of a beautiful long-haired teenage girl running up to meet me on a beautiful sunny hillside, and hugging and kissing me. Damn, I wish that had really happened. Patchouli just sends me. I don’t actually know where this one originated. Damn, I wish that had really happened.
Keri lotion - actually, that bit did sort of happen, not exactly like that but really nice all the same. But she had Keri lotion on, and no patchouli.
Canada geese honking make me wistful. Spring “peepers” (the little frogs) fill me with hope. Pheasants in the woods fill me with inexpressible longing.
The smell of basements (mustiness combined with turpentine, and other basementy smells) and the smell of mothballs will make me very nostalgic. Not nostalgic for anything in particular, but longing for something that never was I guess.
Certain songs are unbearably triggering–I fold up when I hear “Catch the Wind” and I’m not even sure why. I have to avoid the current commercial for wind power!
Makes sense to me. I grew up in Florida and still live there. When do you get rain on a hot pavement? Every damned summer afternoon. When there’s no school. And you’re out playing and being free. I still love that smell…::sigh::
I’m a bit of a sap… so I get teary over all sorts of things.
“The Eyes of Lucy Jordan” really triggers something inside me and I at, at the least, find myself blinking a lot. There are a lot of songs like this, some of them I have no idea why.
There is a certain color of gray that, surprisingly, actually is very close to the color they used in movies for dead things. This color sometimes disturbs me immensely. It turns out that kissing or rubbing the face of the deceased actually CAN rub of a spot of makeup. I STILL flash back to my Sister’s funeral sometimes when I see a small spot of that color. Similarly “Bridge over Troubled Waters” is extremely bittersweet to me.
My boyfriend and I have a habit of reading before we go to bed. I’ve gotten into the habit of going to the restroom after reading but before putting on my C-PAP machine and turning out the light. Now it doesn’t matter if I’m dog tired, and I use the facilities and then go in and read half a page. Once I am done reading, I have to pee.
Really, really good deserts, particularly if they are not horribly sweet, always remind me of my friend Teresa. She was the best cook (and particularly, best baker) I’ve ever known. She was also one of the best, most kind of people.
Some movies, stories or accounts involving abuse or trauma can be very triggering. Typical movie violence or even horror or slasher films aren’t, however. Agonizing depictions of embarrassment are even worse, sometimes. I actually avert my eyes or (if at home) leave the room sometimes during comedies more so than horror movies.
I guess I have a LOT of triggers, but I’m in pretty good control of most of them now.
Northern US has a smell for me, as well. It’s probably the pollen of some grain they have more up there than down in Florida (but yet manages to linger in every season, so maybe not?) I get a whiff of it every once in awhile when a north wind blows.
ETA: and in Orlando, sometimes when the north wind blows it blows the smells of pulp processing from Jacksonville, and while really really strong, it doesn’t really trigger strong memories in me, other than disgust
The smell of sagebrush and the distant sound of trucks on the highway reminds me of where I grew up. It makes me feel lonely and comforted all at the same time. Weird.
My mother liked to put out lots of potpourri when I was growing up, and as a kid I had a thing about “saving” my favorite kind after it had gone stale. I’d put it in a Ziploc bag and keep it in a drawer.
I still have one of those Ziploc bags in the bottom of my dresser, with a handful of other remnants of childhood (books, trophies, papers I had to write, etc.) and smelling it when I open that drawer is like time-traveling.
When I moved away to college I was (not unusually) horribly homesick and miserable for a couple of weeks, and LeeAnn Rhimes’ “How Do I Live” was all over the radio. I hated country music and I hated that song, but it was omnipresent even on mainstream radio; there were a lot of songs that were overplayed that fall but for some reason that’s the one that takes me back most vividly. Hearing it conjures up my hot, tiny little efficiency apartment so strongly that I can smell it, too.
There are other things I could mention but those are the the two that popped into my head; what I find curious is that the happiest or saddest triggers never feel completely happy or completely sad. The most evocative smells/sounds/tastes are always accompanied, for me at least, by the same bittersweet feeling. Regardless of how I felt at the time.
The scent of lily of the valley always reminds me of my mom. She had a vial of essential (or at least scented) oil when I was a kid. Same with Shalimar perfume.
I get the back to school ad nervousness too. On the other side of the coin: Country Time Lemonade commercials bring “yay summer!” feelings.
The themes to The Young and the Restless, and The Price is Right remind me of my grandmother. She loves both. During the summer that she sat for us, we had to watch these shows every day. I’m sure my mom was thrilled to come home and find the kids discussing the soaps. The scent of southern style cooking also remind me of her.
My first girlfriend wore cheap Calvin Klein perfume and smoked Marlboros. Almost 20 years later, the combination of these two scents brings out very impure thoughts on instinct.
The smell of mildew takes me back to my grandparents’ house (in a pleasant way).
The smell of certain indie hardware stores: some combo of lemon oil, fresh-cut wood and machine oil? Takes me back to my hometown.
The smell of sheets that have been dried on the clothesline make me think of being a kid and feeling safe.
Rain on sagebrush is a happy-melancholy trigger. Makes me feel very far from my native Western U.S. The Eastern U.S. has its own smell as well.
Love, love, love the smell of new tires, hot tar, and the old mimeograph ink.
The sound of the Jake brake on a semi-truck reminds me of my dad; he’s a truck driver and I used to go on short- and long-hauls with him when I was a kid.
There’s a uniform “hot electronics” smell that’s the most nostalgic and warm thing in the universe to me. I can trace it to:
my first computer (Apple ][ clone)
my late grandfather’s amateur radio room
the studio of my college radio station (lots of old equipment)
a couple of pieces of music equipment that I have (especially things that run on tubes)
I love the smell, and it makes me incredibly sentimental whenever I get a whiff. It also comes from my turntable (a Technics 1200) when it’s been running for more than a few minutes.
Diesel fumes on a cold day take me back to being fourteen years old and in the high school marching band. We always made it past district in the yearly competition, and every event that wasn’t a football game we traveled in rented buses, the big Greyhound types. We’d almost always start out early in the morning, too. So, if it’s November, and I walk past an idling bus, I’m transported back to one of those days.
My grandparents’ garage in San Antonio had a singular smell to it. There was dust, probably some kerosene or gasoline, but there was something to it, that I only ever smell in other houses that were built before 1965 or so. I don’t know what it is. Maybe the type of wood used to frame the house. Maybe the insulation. Something. When I smell it, I’m a little girl running from backyard to kitchen past my parents and my mother’s parents. I’m loved and safe, and the world is just a new adventure.
Whenever I smell fresh lily’s, i instantly think of death, it’s horrible. The room tthat both my grandparents coffins were in at the family home were both full to the brim of the god damn things, and the smell fills me with such a feeling of sadness. Nowadays, they’re for sale everywhere, even in supermarkets, such a common smell to have such a horrible trigger with.
a good trigger? hmmmm… the sound of and untuned radio late at night, when you can vaguely here foreign accents like french or german coming through the static. I find that the MOST comforting sound in the world. It calms me completely and utterly. And for some reason my SO finds it very very creepy. so i don’t get to listen to it much.
Also, wind and rain against the window, when you’re inside, transports me instantly to my family’s old caravan, where i’d lie in my top bunk and feel so happy to be there on holiday. Remains my favourite place in the world. awesome!
That’s one of the components of the old video game parlour, and when I smell that it takes me back to the golden age of video games (before they improved their electronics, I guess.)
A smell like that, (cleaner and motor oil,) reminds me of the silver age of video games – where there were still a couple games to be found in convenience stores here and there, and some convenience stores replaced their motor oil boutiques with mini parlours. One of them had Crystal Castles, Karate Champ, and a rolling assortment of pinball machines (including the best pinball machine ever, Black Hole,) up until the mid-90s!
That reminds me of one of mine. Baseball on AM radio, with the fading and the whistles and the tinny sound of the voices.
My father listened to every Cleveland game on the radio. Now, I prefer to listen than watch them on TV, but my husband would rather see the action so I don’t get to just sit in the dark and listen to them much.
I can’t stand whiskey. My first “kiss” (in “” because it met the mechanical definition but that’s it) was from the guy who’d taken me home after “my family in Ireland” and the cop across the street had left me behind in a club which I was too young to enter legally; dude didn’t really understand that I was really not interested in going to his place until he asked for “a goodbye kiss at least” and upon performance realized I’d never even been kissed, much less what him and my so-called-caretakers had in mind. He tasted of whiskey.
I love whiskey bottles, they tend to be some of the prettiest in any liquor store. I like BBQ sauce with whiskey in it (so long as it’s a tang, not the base). But don’t give me no whiskey kisses because I get as tense as if I was back in that dark street again.
A whiff of lentil soup can sometimes bring me right back to my grandparents’ in Barcelona.
