for those about to rock

the nose knows

opening the break room fridge for some cream this morning, i was greeted by a mild but moldy smell of old frost.

perhaps i'd never noticed this odor before, but for an instant, a flood of memories hit me unbidden, memories from my youth of sunny saturday afternoons spent finding ways to have fun at my dad's office while he put in overtime selling wholesale lumber, memories of chucking a basketball at an impossibly-high hoop in the parking lot, of climbing up onto the bed of one of the empty 18-wheelers and scaring myself by jumping to the ground six feet below, of hoisting myself up into the seat of a forklift in the warehouse with the intoxicating banana aroma of fresh-cut lumber all around me, of sneaking a peek at the nudie calendar in buzzy's locker as my dad took a post-workout shower (nicknames over the lockers; my dad's said "keanso"), of charlie coombs (the guy who once sneezed cornflakes out of his nose at a morning meeting, according to my father; he always treasured stories like that, and would relate them in careful, animated reenactments)' packard bell computer and the primitive golf game i would force myself to suffer through five minutes at a time, of the time i stapled my index finger just to see what would happen, of that peculiar, moldy smell of frost that greeted me whenever i opened the office fridge to grab leftovers from lunch on our way out the door and into the rest of the weekend.

it's funny how the sense of smell can sometimes provoke such vivid memories.

and how all office fridges smell the same.

posted by jomilkman @ 8:16 AM