2000-12-07 - 6:15pm

On the internal soundtrack: "It's A Small World"

My old boyfriend, Sam, hates "It's A Small World". When he was a kid, his family went to Disney World. His mother loved the "It's A Small World" ride and made everyone wait in line for quite some time to go on it. Twice. And all the ride is, if I remember correctly, is a bunch of animatronic children in costumes representing various countries, while the song plays incessantly in the background.

I can't blame him for hating it. I find it tolerable, but that's because I don't mind the song. When I wanted to annoy him I used to sing the song within earshot.

It's pretty interesting how the song on the internal soundtrack usually triggers a memory. I love that. "Comfortably Numb" (Pink Floyd) and "Sympathy for the Devil" (Rolling Stones) always bring back memories of pining for Poindexter, back when I was too young and too chicken to declare myself. Songs from Tool's "Aenima" album remind me very strongly of San Jose, because it was always playing in the car when we lived there.

Smell is the same way, but even more so. I've heard that the centers in the brain for memory and smell are very close together, or something. The weirdest memory I got out of a scent was from Palmolive, the dishwashing liquid. I went for years and years without smelling that, because no one I knew used it. Then I got to college and one of my housemates bought it for the kitchen sink, and I caught one whiff and I was back in NURSERY SCHOOL again. They used to use Palmolive in the play sinks, where I would play housewife and wash dishes, as a four-year-old. Pretty wacky.

Smells (scents? odors? is there any nice way to say this without sounding like you're talking about perfume?) are a big deal for me. I have a pretty strong sense of smell and some smells are almost like catnip for me, or something. I smell them and I get all happy. I could sniff them all day. I'm not the only one with this weird characteristic -- there's a woman I know of who had an incredibly strong desire to sniff soap when she was pregnant. I like going into candle stores and sniffing all the different scented candles, although actually burning them in my house is too cloying for me.

Some of my favorite smells are:

garlic (it makes me want to eat, too)

vanilla

coffee (but I don't like to drink it)

lilac

hyacinth

raw pizza dough

cloves

the Christmas tree

gasoline (not a good idea to sniff this for an extended period)

Band-Aids (more specifically, the way they smelled 15 years ago)

Poindexter

Yeah, on the last one, you're grossed out. But a lot of people feel that way about their significant other. You know what I mean. If you're going to spend any amount of time with your arms wrapped around someone and your face buried in his neck, he better smell good. I wouldn't want to sniff anybody else, except maybe a baby. Babies smell good, except for the obvious and when they reek of Desitin. Good old Desitin.

On the flip side, I go batshit when there are smells I don't like. I can smell someone smoking a cigarette on the next block, practically. Poindexter used to smoke (about three a day), and his ashtray sitting in the living room drove me crazy and I had to put it outside. Here's a few more I hate:

incense

the pavement right after it starts to rain (some people love this)

freshly cut grass (ditto)

sauerkraut

canned spinach

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