Apparently our sense of smell is the biggest memory trigger we have.

However, apart from Poison, I usually find it's music that will transport me right back to a particular time and place. Just a couple of chords is enough to set off a reverie.

How about you..? Song..? Smell..? What..?

-- Immy (immy@rocketmail.com), October 17, 1999

Answers

"Drive" by the Cars always sends me straight back to the roller disco I used to frequent all day every Saturday...

-- Grebil (Sarah.Watkins@onyx.net), October 17, 1999.

Yeah, both smell and song that take me back. Certain perfumes - like 4711 and Jovan Musk take me back to being on the brink of puberty, wearing glittered boob tubes, tight blue faberge jeans with big cuffs and frosted white high-block-heeled shoes, hanging around the local mall.

Summer smells and coconut tanning lotion always remind me of growing up too, beach holidays, icypoles, pool parties, baking in babyoil, my friend and I maniacally moshing around to Plastic Bertrand, Boney M and The Village People inside on 40 degree days.

The smell of violets reminds me of being at my Nanna's house when I was little.

Sometimes when I walk past the local Bingo hall, the smells from inside (musty smells mixed with fast foods like pies and sauce) reminds me of days at the rollerdisco, which I also used to frequent at least weekly. Songs take me there too - Wired for Sound, Come on Eileene, My Own Way, Angel in the Centrefold, any songs by Moving Pictures or The Angels. Any songs from about 80-82. They remind me of fast-skating backwards with the DJ's brother whom I had a mad crush on.

'Am I ever gonna see your face again' ("no way! get fucked! fuck off!") by the Angels, and songs by Wham! and Madonna take me back to my days at YMCA Junior Disco's where I used to be a junior 'bouncer' - breaking up pashing couples with the aid of a flashlight shone in their faces. But then I used to go and pash with the 'bad' boys in the cloakroom! Heh.

And any early to mid-80s rap and breakdance songs remind me of times when I used to drag my friends into the city, in particular the city square - where all of the 'wogs' (oh how I loved the Italian, Greek, Yugoslav and Maltese boys) used to hang out breakdancing. I took 3 semesters of breakdancing classes and hardly learned a thing, except for the body roll, (which I can still do!) and hanging around at the sidelines doing that arm swinging, feet shuffling thing. But I used to love perving on the spunky teachers (4 of them!). Everyone, including me, had hair teased a foot high. I used to be a completely different person in those days too and I sometimes wonder where that girl went. Why, I was a brazen little hussy in those days!

Well, those are just my early 80s triggers. I could go on and on about the late 80s and early 90s too, which have their own trigger perfumes and songs and completely different social scenes, but I'll spare you!

BTW, do you have any pictures of you in your white leather mini-skirt and pink ankle boots? You should put them up on your site to share with us. What a classic!

-- jamaica (jamaica@kitschkitten.com), October 18, 1999.

Sweet's "Fox on the Run", Footloose, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple,

Patchouli Oil and Incense, Crushed Lilac Velvet Flares, Treads (which I still have as they WILL be fashionable again before I die),

Cork shoes, Staggers flared jeans that actually covered the cork shoes and were twelve inches too long, except when you had your cork shoes on..

Wrist radios that looked like oversized primary colored bracelets, those tiny very thin plastic bracelets that you had to wear at least 60 of on each arm, Eight track cassette tapes (you could only fit 4 of them in your car as they were very large), cottontail briefs (yuck, not a pleasant memory, but mother's insisted they were far better for you than those nylon bikini things) and boys would leave you alone once they knew you wore those "bog catchers", but I'm sure that's why mum insisted...

and drinks...Masala and Coke, Pimms and Lemonade, Blackberry Nip (really, as you can see, anything as long as it was cheap),

-- Sue (suzit@bigpond.com), November 18, 1999.

am i even allowed to be nostalgic? i'm only 19...

but this is an interesting topic, considering last week i was in need of shampoo and just borrowed my mother's since it was there and the bottles were full. palmolive naturals, i believe, which i think is the poor man's answer clairol herbal essences, but that's just me. anyway, later, as my hair was drying, the smell of the shampoo and conditioner hit me, and i thought...

"my hair smells like my grandmother's house! ick! erk! get it off me!"

i could have just washed my hair again, but i put up with it for the entire weekend. i smelled like my nanna's house, and there was nothing i could do about it. this is bad because i just hate her house, and i haven't actually spoken to her in over a year, well, i have, but that's only because i've been unfortunate enough to pick up the phone whenever she calls our house.

looking at pictures of my sister in lycra tights and really awful dresses reminds me of the eighties, which reminds me of jimmy barnes pre-european-"makeover", which reminds me of "khe san", which reminds me of my year 12 formal, during which all of the "popular" boys hijacked the dj guy and made him play said cold chisel song, and they sang along to it, which just capped off a fairly miserable evening anyway.

images and songs do much to disturb me.

am i getting off topic in any way here...? anyway... i think i'll shush now!

-- sammy (ahtalvik@alphalink.com.au), November 19, 1999.