Olfactory Reminiscence

What the??? The craziest thing happened today! I went into the bathroom where I work, and the maintenance guy had just cleaned up--apparently having used a lot of chlorine bleach. For the first time in years, I smelled the chlorine! I drew in deep breaths through my nose and basked in the familiar smells and memories. I let myself wander back in my mind to the many swimming parties with my friends in Phoenix and a vivid, previously-forgotten memory of the early-morning, summer swims with my best friend Sean Buck in his pool (after having warm coke and cold pizza for breakfast). I remembered how I used to pretty much live at his house in the summertime, and we'd wake up, and alternate the entire day between basketball, swimming, and TV. During the early afternoon, nothing was on, and in our search for entertainment, we landed on PBS with Bob Ross, the Happy Painter. We actually even went to Standard Brands paint (across the field) and bought all the colors (cadmium blue, cadmium yellow, etc.) so we could paint along with him. We tried that once, and when our paintings sucked, we ditched that effort, and increased the ratio of basketball and swimming in the early afternoons.

Then, as quickly as it came, it was gone. I thought maybe I had just become accustomed to it, so I left the bathroom, went across the street to get a drink (44 oz Dr. Pepper, of course,) and came back to try and smell the chlorine. No luck. It was gone. I asked some random guy if it smelled like chlorine in there.

"Yeah."

"Bummer."

Is that crazy? Do other hyposmics get smells back for a short time? What is going on? Has anyone ever experienced this? Is this just another proof that it's the Dr. Pepper?

Regardless, it was fun to relic in a couple of forgotten smell-triggered memories.