There are so many little things that can make you happy or sad, the slightest thing can evoke a memory, and make us smile while doing something mundane or close to tears at an inappropriate moment.
The smell of honeysuckle always takes me back with a whoosh to being woken up in the middle of the night in the summer when I was a child, and the whole house had been woken up by a storm. It wasn't raining, just lots of big flashes of lightening followed by huge cracks of thunder. It was so warm, we sat with the patio doors open and watched the storm as it went past. There was a huge honeysuckle bush right by the doors, and the smell was so strong during that storm, I remember almost feeling dizzy from the smell.
Hospital food always takes me back, not to the three years I spent working in a hospital laboratory, but instead to when my Grandmother was very sick in hospital. She died after about three weeks of being in hospital. Because I worked there I would pop down in some of my breaks and lunch hours, to see her and whoever was at her bedside, usually my Mum or her sister. We didn't really get on with her sister, and so polite conversation was what I was often faced with when she was there. Whenever I left her hospital room I would have a huge surge in my stomach, I felt sick and my breath would be hard and difficult. I was usually crying by the time I got back up to work, so I had to leave time to sort myself out before I went back to sorting out blood samples, and typing up patient details. I never much liked working in the hospital, the people I worked with were often difficult, and just seeing patients reduced to a couple of symptoms on a piece of paper was hard.
Others were often reminded that there was a person behind each blood sample, but I like to think I always paid special attention to each blood sample that passed through my hands. I used to feel upset on the patients behalf when a blood taker hadn't taken enough blood to be able to do the test, or if a student Doctor appeared with a blood sample wanting blood for a transfusion and they hadn't filled the patients details in properly. Sounds petty now, but if you are going to be transfusing 2 pints of blood into a person, you really need to know that the blood you are cross matching belongs to the patient!! It was always the urgent ones that had the Doctors eyes rolling into the backs of their heads, at the same time as everyone else was tutting and shaking their heads and telling them to do it properly.
There are always reasons for rules and regulations, I hate it when people go into overdrive moaning about having to tick boxes or sign here, here and here - a procedure will only be there because a mistake was made in the past.
Anyway, off on a tangent as usual!
Smells I find are the biggest trigger of memories, and maybe music, sometimes a song will come on the radio - or a music channel, and you will be able to close your eyes and be transported back. Michael Jackson's Billy Jean always transports me back to our old family house, in the summer, into my bedroom which I shared with my little brother. I can see a clock on the wall I think it may have been a cat shape, and its tail moved and also made its eyes move from side to side. I'm not really sure if its real or in my head, but I think the curtains in my room were quite thin, because the sun was still shinning, and it was making the room glow through the curtains.....but that might not be a proper memory - the mind does funny things!
Billy Joel's Uptown Girl always transports me back to the Autumn/Winter time being all dressed ready for school in our then new house. I had a packed lunch ready, but decided as we were getting ready to go that I didn't want to stay for packed lunch, and my Dad was a bit cross with me because I had messed everyone about. I was scared off from packed lunches, when I dropped some yogurt down my school tie, and the boys I was sitting with (I didn't have any female friends then) all called me a baby and laughed at me. I don't think I ever took a yogurt to school again!! I still am a bit nervous of eating yogurts in front of people, and recently splatted myself with yogurt at work, I laughed it off and made a joke about it, but I remembered that little girl with her yellow Muppets packed lunch box who everyone had laughed at all those years ago.
I hated going to school, I was lonely and sad, and when my son started at school just under two years ago all I could remember was being so confused all the time, not really understanding what we were doing or why. I tried to fill my little boy with as much information as possible, but I don't know if it worked. His first year at school was hard work, and he was upset a lot. He seems happier this year, but still has trouble fitting in with the children in his class. From what little he tells us, he plays with the older children more than those in his class. I was the same when I first started at school. If I could I wouldn't send them to school, such a hateful place, full of social ideals and guidelines which each child is measured against. There is always children full of hate ready to spread their poison in order to relieve their own pain from their own situations.
Every parent teacher meeting, or review of his work reminds me of how I was at school, I started off fairly confident, top of my class for reading, being sent to older classes to keep me challenged at the level I was at. I was terrible at Math, and fell behind the other children by a good couple of books. I begged the teacher to let me take the books home with me so I could be on the same book as everyone else, but she wouldn't let me. I was five.
It all seems so silly now, but I never really caught up with Math, so when I took my GCSE and managed to get a C grade I was overjoyed. I now work in an accounts department giving new customers their credit limits after reviewing their yearly accounts - work that one out, because I certainly can't!
All this from a couple of sniffs and sounds.......
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