"Lions, Tigers and Popcorn...Oh My!" : The Role of Smell in Memory.

     

    I doubt that it’s an entirely unique assertion for me to make when I comment upon my difficulty recalling memories from my childhood. While many individuals in my immediate social sphere of friends and family tend to readily be able to reminisce upon childhood moments in vivid detail without any sort of delay, I’m often unable to contribute much to any conversations about my upbringing, except for bare bones details about where I went to school or who babysat me, devoid of any concert knowledge as to what defining character building moments/events “little Ethan” may have experienced in his early days; I just sit off to the side, twiddling my thumbs in ignorance, while my parents (thankfully) fill in the blanks about my character as a youth. With this having been said though, this past summer I had an (unexpected) experience that ran quite contrary to my own preconceived  perception(s) about my brain’s capacity for recollecting foundational memories. Without intentionally doing so, I had managed a few weeks ago to remember a memory of a time when I engaged in my very first exposure(s) to theme park rides. Where I once felt quite certain that I would never be able to have any sort of profound (or rather vivid) comprehension of the high-notes of my childhood, my reality has been quite shaken (in a positive way). Looking back on this moment from my summer vacation (retrospectively), I realize that I had an experience consistent with a common talking point Diane Ackerman brings up within her work entitled A Natural History of the Senses having to do with humanity’s sense of smell. As she had stated herself:

“Unlike the other senses, smell needs no interpreter. The effect is immediate and undiluted by language, thought, or translation. A smell can be overwhelmingly nostalgic because it triggers powerful images and emotions before we have time to edit them. What you see and hear may quickly fade into the compost heap of short-term memory, but as Edwin T. Morris points out in Fragrance, ‘there is almost no short-term memory with odors’ ” (Ackerman 11).

I couldn’t have said this any better myself.  

To set the scene, it’s important for you (as a reader) to have some minor background information about my family. Whether you may dread or enjoy being in the presence of your family members en masse, I’m sure a majority of us have at least indulged our relatives a few times by taking part in some sort of planned get together. I’m certainly no exception to this assumption. Every year, my family holds an outdoor get-together where we chat and feast at picnic tables located in Slater park (in the Pawtucket area)  to reconnect. For any reader who may be unfamiliar with the layout of Slater Park, an important landmark to note is a carousel situated smack-dab in the middle of the said area. This specific carousel had been an ideal spot for my grandparents (when they would play the role of baby sitters) to take my two cousins and myself as a way of entertaining us all simultaneously on many occasions. During the most recent family reunion, my cousin Sophia (who is 27 at this point) was quite insistent upon reliving our (apparently shared) childhood experiences of riding on this contraption. Of course, due to the fact I hadn’t the slightest idea how significant this ritual of ours was to my younger self, I saw the whole thing as being pretty inconsequential at first. Upon walking into the building, before I could even register the sights, I was immediately hit with the sounds of old-timey music and the smell(s) of a popcorn machine. The presence of junk food at amusement/theme park adjacent spaces isn’t exactly an uncommon thing, so I supposed (at the time) that it shouldn’t be surprising that there existed a popcorn machine behind the ticket desk. As I had gotten closer to the potent smell, as all sales both for food and for tickets were taking place in the same spot, I had a rather sudden (and visceral) feeling of nostalgia. Upon stewing with this feeling for some time while waiting in line, I managed to remember (unassisted by any outside entity) why this feeling presented itself. Even though I had a baseline knowledge of why this specific setting should have significance to my cousins and I, based on what Sophia had recounted in my presence, she had (unintentionally) left out certain details in her verbal recounting of the event(s) that little me must have found important enough to (unconsciously) store in my memory bank. As I’ve established above, my grandparents used to take my cousins and myself to this spot as fun little field trips to keep us occupied. Some details that Sophia either forgot about (or just simply neglected to mention) became extremely clear to me in the form of very graphic images. For instance, while us grandkids would indulge in a ride on the carousel, I remembered that my Mema and Pepa would give us our space to partake in the ride without trying it out themselves. Instead one of them would watch us from afar on an indoor waiting bench (off to the side) provided by the carousel staff, while the other chaperon would return to the front desk and buy some bags of popcorn (as a not so unexpected surprise for their grandchildren). On each completed rotation of the carousel during my more modern visit, I found myself instinctively looking at a very specific bench where my grandparents would have been sitting, while they waited for my cousins and I to be done with the ride, with the goodies they had conditioned us to expect. If I hadn’t been able to smell the buttered popcorn, I highly doubt that I would have been able to revive this memory.

While I do agree with a vast majority of what Ackerman said about the sense of smell as a whole, there is one point I would like to differ from her on based upon the event mentioned above. At one point within her work, Ackerman had mentioned a moment from her adult life where she had paid a visit to California to tag the wings of butterflies (Ackerman 18). This author made it a point to highlight that the smell of eucalyptus plants surrounding her had (apparently) triggered a memory from her childhood of her mother rubbing Vapo-Rub on her chest when she was sick (which supposedly shares a smell with the aforementioned eucalyptus) (Ackerman 19). Following up with this comment, Ackerman also mentioned that the butterfly tagging eventually replaced the memory with her mother when she later came into contact with that smell again. As said by the author of A Natural History of the Senses: 

“Though at first tagging butterflies triggered memories of childhood, afterward the butterfly tagging itself became a scent-triggerable memory” (Ackerman  19).

 

I feel as though the memory of my time at the Slater Park carousel wasn’t replaced by the fresher/newer memory of myself and Sophia, but it was instead renewed in a much more potent manner (to my delight). Although, who knows if that will be the truth in the future!

    PS.) for anyone wondering about the title, I wanted to hint at the fact that I made Wheaton proud by choosing to ride on the only lion figure on the carousel (as you can see in the second image above).