I am sometimes blown away by how powerful the sense of smell is. It has a variety of really strong behaviors for me, and I think most.
1. Smell makes food taste so much better. Walk into a room where a Ham has just come out of the oven, or where bacon is frying, and the ham or bacon becomes so much more desirable, and more tasty when you eat it. This is especially true when you were already really hungry.
2. Go without candy for awhile, then take a whiff of some M&Ms or some red vines. Makes me want it so bad I feel like a recovering addict.
3. Smell has a strong connection to memory. Sometimes a whiff of something brings back really specific memories. For instance, I was walking down a street in Seattle a few years ago, and I was hit by a pollution-related smell common in big cities. It triggered very specific memories from my mission in the Philippines, where that specific smell was much more common. I went to my Grandparents house in LA a few years ago for a visit with my Dad and brother. The smell in their laundry room (soapy?) was the exact same smell that their laundry room had the last time I visited them, at least a decade before. That smell hit me and my brother like a wall and was almost the highlight of the trip for me. The smell of Lilacs always makes me remember summers in Rock Springs, where we had a Lilac bush in our front yard.
Smell is awesome.
