I guess it’s kinda common knowledge that smells can be intensely evocative. More so, even, than sights or tastes or sounds. There’s a scientific reason for why this is so, but I’m not so much concerned with that right now. I’m more interested in the experience of it … the way a whiff of a pipe can take me right back to my grandfather’s lap or a nose hit from a chocolate martini reminds me—very viscerally—why a Thermos of martinis at a football game just ain’t a good idea.
Being something of a backwards-looking girl by nature, I’ve gone to great lengths at times to protect my olfactory memories … packing around a bottle of cologne since high school just in case I want to revisit my first love, discontinuing the use of a certain hair product so that the smell of it would forever remind me of my trip to Sweden, and, most recently, not washing my pillowcases for three weeks to preserve the smell of someone dear, who I knew I wouldn’t be smelling again anytime soon. Yup. Great lengths. I told you.
Anyway, what got me thinking of all this, you’re wondering? (Yes, you are wondering.) Well, the other day I bought a new brand of makeup. See, I had run out of my usual foo-foo, department store makeup, and—in an effort to be frugal (doggy surgery is not inexpensive, as it turns out)—I went to my neighborhood CVS and bought the most basic Cover Girl makeup I could find. Beyond congratulating myself on the 35 bucks or so I had just saved, I didn’t give the purchase much more thought.
When I busted it out to use the next morning, though, I got a good, strong smell of the stuff … vaguely like Noxema, medicinal almost. One sniff and I instantly recognized the aroma, instantly found myself back in the bathroom of my childhood best friend, the two of us preening in front of the huge wall mirror and slopping on makeup like a couple of two-dollar whores. I mean, I could SEE us there … the floral wallpaper, the ruffled shower curtain, and Shel (in her purple oxford and purple sweater) trying to show me how to put eyeliner around the inner rim of my eyes. Mornings after sleepovers, nights before dances, and whenever else we didn’t have anything better to do … this scene was so familiar to me that it’s imprinted in my brain somehow. To access: just add Cover Girl.
Now, I find myself thinking of things from that time, dreaming randomly about kids from junior high.
The crazy part is, around the same time, I stumbled upon this blog (which is funny in it’s own right). What is germane to this story, however, is that Mindy had just written a post that contained a letter to her 13-year-old self. Thirteen … that’s just about exactly how old I was in these great Cover Girl–induced flashbacks I’d been having. Fucking synchronicity, huh?
Okay, maybe the synchronicity is not so obvious, but I took it as a sign that I must write a letter to my 13-year-old self.
I’m working on it, but it’s a task fraught with … well, difficulty. Try it. You’ll see. I think it’s an excellent exercise; though, to what end, I’m not quite sure yet. I’ll let you know, if I find out.
It’s quite possible, mind you, that when I finish this letter to my former self, I will suddenly awake to a different life … one predicated on all the sage advice I offer my 13-year-old self in said letter. One, perhaps, that does not include Crazy Monkey Gurls Unite.
Ah, what am I saying? I never follow my own advice … why would my bratty, little shit of a 13-year-old self be any different?
