I love hearing owls hoot in the morning. It reminds me of staying over at my grandparents' and going outside on crisp summer mornings when it hadn't quite warmed up yet.
Also the smell of pickles. There used to be a pickle factory about 10 blocks from where I grew up, and I remember lying in bed at night during the summer with the windows open and smelling the pickles being made. I loved that smell! The factory has been closed up for years now, but every once in a while when I'm at my dad's, if the wind is blowing just right, I can still smell the vats.
City bus stops, with the clear plastic. We didn't have a car and my mom hadn't renewed her license (why, when we couldn't afford a car or the gas to put in it anyway?), so when we weren't walking everywhere, we traveled by city bus. The Mishawaka and South Bend city buses had different routes, so if we needed to go somewhere in South Bend, we'd have to transfer, which usually meant waiting at a bus stop for a while. I remember breathing on the plexiglass then drawing on the windows. (How unsanitary is that?!)
The smell of crayons. The smell of crayons zaps me to early childhood. My mom used to put stray crayons in a large coffee tin. I think eventually all crayons become "stray". My younger brother and I would spend hours coloring. She still has the "crayon can" .
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You should fear anything that can bleed for seven days without dying... (as told to Mr. DS on 3-12-10)
Aw man, I remember the crayon can! My grandma did that exact same thing too! Except, these were leftover crayons from my mom, aunt, and uncles, so I never got to color with them new. She didn't have coloring books either, instead she had large sheets of newsprint, kept in the piano bench.
The song Philadelphia Freedom reminds me of the happy part of my childhood, back before I had a clue of what life was really like. It was my favorite song... used to sing it while playing on the swingset in the back yard.
Cuckoo clocks... reminds me of a trip to my great aunt Elzira's house in Detroit.
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MM
That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.
I loved crayons and coloring books. Since there were 3 of us, a new box of crayons or a brand new coloring book didn't stay new for very long.
I still like to color. Usually I buy a new box of crayons and a coloring book every year when I first go up to the cabin to open it for the summer. On rainy days, I haul them out and color.
The smell from a brand new bag of M&Ms. When you first open the bag and take a deep smell, takes me back to when my one Grandmom would visit. She would always bring us a little something, a bag of M&Ms, Oreos or some other cookies.
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Stop trying to be what you see. Be what you ought to be.
The smell of a warm breeze. Now, everyone goes from having the heat on to having the air on. But that feel of a windy warm day, the wind blowing in the curtains, going all through the house, and that smell that only a warm breeze has. It takes me back to being inside on a warm day (I didn't always get to go outside at one apartment we lived at), reading a book, with the radio on.
On Mz's smell note: The smell of fall. When the temps drop in the early evening and there is that hint of falling/wet leaves. Then the smell of the fire in the pit you are sitting next to in order to keep warm and stave off the cooler temps.
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Stop trying to be what you see. Be what you ought to be.
Bike riding. How can anyone forget the freedom and independence mastering a two-wheel bike gives? I felt so grown up when I learned how to ride a bike, even if the only place I could ride was around the block on the sidewalk. The other side of the block felt like miles from home.