Thankful Nov. Day 25: Thankful for Smell

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With the traditional feast around the corner, I felt it appropriate to talk about smell. The last of the senses to be discussed but not the least.

The most potent memories are those that are attached somehow to one of our senses – sight, sound, touch, taste and of course smell. There are countless stories of people recalling memories of a time, place, situation or a person all based on a smell. There are theories this can even be a sign of paranormal activity. People have reported smells that may have been associated with people who occupied a space at one time, such as a particular perfume a woman wore or cigar smoke because a gentleman smoked in a certain room repeatedly. Imagine if it were true… an energy so strongly connected to a smell that it would remain long after the person associated with it had died. Intense.

Sadly not all memories are good. There can be smells associated with bad times in our lives, things we don’t want to remember. I suppose the good thing is by then those smells serve as a warning, a way to remember to not go back down that road.  Clearly smell can be a more literal warning in terms of danger such as smoke.

There are smells that remind us of people. There are certain perfumes or colognes that a person wore that reminds us of them, which then triggers a litany of other memories. The thing about smell is it can happen at any time. It can come lofting in from another room or as we walk past certain stores. We may be someplace where we least expect to experience a particular smell again and yet there it is; it’s completely inescapeable. This is sometimes a nice way of remembering people and sometimes it brings sadness.

With Thanksgiving days away, I can already smell the delights. Turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, olives, rolls, vegetables and pumpkin pie. A strong enough memory attached to those smells and make a person hungry. I better stop talking about it, or I’ll have to grab something to munch before bed.

The five senses are pretty amazing. They all do so much to make our lives enriched and so much more that it seems. They serve a dutiful purpose but they also are the spices of life. They even entertain us. I’m very fortunate to have all five in tact and working well. It’s a wonderful blessing.

There were a few other things I’ve been forgetting to discuss at the end of my posts as of late. I wanted to end these with a little note about notable things that happened in November. How dare I forget! So please allow me to rewind a bit and get caught up in what would have happened in recent days but in the past.

Nov. 14 – National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day (need to make room for all those leftovers that you’ll soon have – plus there could be some icky smells you don’t want hanging around).

Nov. 15 – America Recycles Day

Nov. 16 – Button Day and fall of the Inca Empire (1533).

Nov. 17 – Homemade Bread Day and Take a Hike Day (for after eating all that wonderfully smelling bread).

Nov. 18 – Mickey Mouse’s Birthday (how dare I forget such a day!); Antarctica discovered in 1820.

Nov. 19 – President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address in 1863. Sometimes the most effective speeches are those that don’t take very long.

Nov. 20 – Mexican Revolution Day; the traffic light was patented in 1923 – good safety feature out there.

Nov. 21 – Mayflower Compact signed in 1620 and World Hello Day (Hello!)

Nov. 22 – In 1963, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald. This was an incredibly significant day for us in more ways than one. The world hasn’t been the same since. It almost figures that this has also become Stop the Violence Day.

Nov. 23 – National Cashew Day (ick!)

Nov. 24 – Charles Darwin publishes “The Origin of Species” in 1859; Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated by Jack Ruby in 1963.

Nov. 25 – Andrew Carnegie was born in 1835.

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