Subtle Messages

What is invisible, comes in infinite varieties, and can be made by anyone? If you said anything other than “smells” your critical thinking skills probably stink. Smells really are an amazing way of conveying information in very subtle ways.

As a father of young children, one smell tells me that it is time to change a diaper, while another smell tells me that last week’s missing sippy cup of milk is very close by. The kids never have to say a word, yet I know so much about them just by sniffing. And if I know that much about my kids just by absorbing their aromas, imagine how well my dogs must know them. Poor guys.

My wife uses smells to communicate with me as well. She has one smell that says, “I just brushed my teeth, you can kiss me now” and anther smell that says, “my hands are dry and I just put lotion on them.” One of my favorite spousal smell scenarios is the “Welcome home, Honey. Dinner’s ready!” smell.

Outside of the home smells abound as well. One way that I communicate with my neighbors is by running by their houses at dinner time. Last night I was out for a jog just as the sun was setting and dinners were coming out of the oven. As I jogged past, one neighbor told me that he was grilling steaks for dinner. Another informed me that they would be having something spicy with an ethnic flare to it. As I ran, I breathed in the diesel fumes of a passing truck and hoped that guy found a new smell soon. Around the corner, another family was definitely dining on the Mexican side of the menu while another had their trash cans out a day early, and for good reason.

I picked up my pace as I raced from house to house sampling their sensational smells. Soon the sweat was building up on me and dripping down my back. My body responded by giving me a smelly message of its own, “Good thing you put that deodorant on.”

A few miles later, I trotted up my driveway and paced up and down it for a few minutes to cool off. The second I opened the door, my two-year-old daughter, in her usual fashion, squealed out for joy as she exclaimed, “Daddy! Did you take a run?”

“Yup, I took a run.”

“Hold me,” she pleaded, her short arms stretched up longing to cling to her daddy.

“But Daddy’s all sweaty right now.”

“Oooh, you're stinky,” she replied and stepped back. Apparently my non-verbal cues had resonated with her and she suddenly lost her need to be held.

Sometimes smells not only send messages to others, but they can bring back memories as well. Have you ever been stuck at a red light behind an old car? I had that opportunity just the other day. Shortly after flipping a U-turn to compensate for the turn I had just missed, I found myself stuck behind an old Volkswagen with 40-year-old fumes dumping out of its tail pipe. The smell, however, was not much different from the smell of the old Ford station wagon that my mom had when I was young. Oh, the good old days were flooding back. Suddenly I was riding backwards in that flip-up jump-seat, my sweaty legs sticking to the black vinyl as my 1981 vintage shorts stretched only an inch or two below my 6-year-old cheeks.

Then before I could start playing with my game watch, the light turned green and I was all of a sudden thrust back into the reality that I was now driving a modern-day wagon of my own with all sorts of kids in the back wanting to go to the zoo where a whole new array of smells was no doubt awaiting me.