Olfactory memories

Funny how smells can be linked to specific memories. Yesterday my wife and I bought some tomatoes, a whole box of 'em actually. The box is in the kitchen. Today I caught a whiff of something as I was getting a glass of milk, and later realized that it was the tomatoes that I was smelling.

Fine, my lousy sense of smell finally registered something, big deal. But as the day progressed, each time I passed by the tomatoes and inhaled their fragrance something in the back of my mind was trying to work its way to my consciousness. At some point I asked myself, "Where do I know this smell from?" And lo and behold, it came to me: Grandpa and Grandma Playfair.

Grandma was diabetic, quite a serious one, insulin everyday. I used to go eat lunch at their house every Wednesday and she always made me Kraft Dinner. Always too soupy, and the milk was always too warm because she insisted that it had to sit on the table for 20 minutes before drinking otherwise it was dangerous. Anyway, Grandma and Grandpa always ate the same thing: lettuce and tomato on brown bread. They always seemed to have many tomatoes on the counter, and their kitchen smelled of them (the rest of the house smelled of mothballs, but I digress...). And that tomato smell has lain dormant in my brain for the last 32 years until today. I've obviously smelled tomatoes in the intervening years but never did I make that link back to when I first smelled them.

What other olfactory surprises lie hidden in my head? Time will tell...