Laurie Writes

Joanna has a meme here.

posted by Laurie @ 9:40 AM

Olfactory Memory. How weird. I'm sitting at my desk, and I remember a smell. It smells like hot lunch at my kindergarten - a private school I only went to for one year, but seems to have made an impact on me. I don't have very many early memories. People recount memories from when they were younger than 10 in minute detail, and I feel very inadequate, as I have only flashes, if that much.

I wonder what made them stick?

Anyway, I don't remember where we ate hot lunch in this school, or what it was, but for a split second I remembered this SMELL, which I can only associate with this school. The elementary school I attended from 1st through 8th grade was Catholic, and poor, and we brown-bagged it, except for once a month hot-dog days. Imagine having a hot-dog day now. It would be impossible. Eat a plain dog - no low-sodium, no turkey dog, no tofu-dog options - with a Coke in the old-school glass bottle and a princely choice of Cheetos, Doritos or potato chips - and like it, kids. Or, perhaps more to the point, "like it, parents." It was a nitrate-laden nightmare, and we lived for it like fiends.

So I'm wondering now, why I remembered that smell today of all days, 30 years later, and more importantly, why it imprinted itself then? I remember other smells - my Nanny in church, who smelled powdery mostly when she hugged me to her as she sat in the pew while everyone else but us went to communion. ("Why don't you go to communion, Nanny?" I'd ask, every week. And every week, she'd say, "Because I said "BASTARD" and didn't go to confession.) Crayons everyone remembers because they're still around. Play-Doh. Duh. That's a tough one. But hot lunch when I was just a bitty thing of four, always the youngest in all of my classes? Weird.

posted by Laurie @ 9:21 AM