Past and present scents

I was excited last month when my perfume kit arrived. It was the first time in my life I had ordered something online ALL by myself and got it delivered to Nigeria, not  sent  to some address abroad and then shipped here but really, from the supplier straight to Nigeria. Where in Nigeria and how the hassle I went through to get my goods home is another story for another day. 

My special perfume kit  had arrived, the world was at my finger tips! I was going to make fragrances that  no nose had ever smelled! It was going to be glorious, my name everywhere, people talking about my invention that has hit the world by storm... I hadn't decided on the name to call it yet but whatever name it was, it was going to be just as earth shattering as the perfume itself. It was going to smell like ... well nothing!

I opened the lesson notes that came with the kit and the first lesson was, everything smells like something. Every scent you could think of falls under one category or the other... that was a bummer because it meant making the perfume the world was yet to smell would be impossible unless it smells like a unique combination of different scents(notes) the world is familiar with. Ditto!

Little things seem nothing, but they give peace, like those meadow flowers which individually seem odorless but all together perfume the air. Georges Bernanos

The second lesson was the first step to making my own perfume; "smelling." 

 The kit consisted of twenty six bottles of  different fleuressence labelled  A to Z to help the perfumer's apprentice (not beginner, please) like me, easily remember the different categories of scents, form association with them and smell them with my brain not my nose.If that sounded confusing,then you're welcome because soon it shan't and it will be thanks to my exploits on this adventure you have decided to go with me.

The first bottle A contained the Ali-fat-ic category fleuressence, Aldehyde. I shall write my thought on that some day but the second which is the reason for the long story above was B- for Ice berg.

B- for IceBerg- cooling notes. The smell of my past in a bottle! menthol! methylated rub, trebor, dusting powder, tom-tom,  sprint gum, nico sweet(black sweet in transparent red wrapper) all that smell brought back memories of prickly heat and being covered in dusting powder, chewing an unhealthy amount of sprint gum after winning several packs during a  7UP promo, buttermint and nico were the candies we spent our Herbert McCauley coins on back then, we bought those things in packs for one Naira. I broke the Number one rule of smelling, for nostalgia, I inhaled deeply, again and again, holding the paper strip to my nose.

It occurred to me then;  why in the world would I want to make a perfume that smells like nothing! why wouldn't I want to make a perfume that makes me feel like running in the rain and coming home to my mum's warm arms, where she had rub for my chest and dry clothes ready so I didn't catch a cold. The scolding always came after the first cup of hot cocoa  never before and the smell of rub lasted until later into the  night when I fell asleep.  I'm not saying I intend to make a perfume that smells like Vicks inhaler, I mean a perfume that makes someone nostalgic. 

What smell would trigger that nostalgia for you. Please share, I'll be happy to read them.