Just Finished Wipin' Your Car Down

On a recent episode of House, the titular insufferable asshole was involved in an auto accident and lost his memory. While trying to recall the last four hours of his life, he proceeds to try the following remedies: undergoing hypnosis, retracing his steps, sensory deprivation, overdosing on Alzheimer's medication, and burying his face in a pile of soiled clothing.

Smell, you understand, is the sense most closely associated with memory.

This is a lingering side effect of evolving from nomadic apes who needed to recall exactly where the best food was found and, perhaps most importantly, recognizing it for what it was when it popped up elsewhere.

Keep in mind that apes didn't evolve color vision until it helped them figure out which lady baboons had the reddest, most fertile baby-makin' asses.

A scent is exactly as potent for me as the next guy, but to say scent is the strongest is dangerous close to ignoring the fusion of the other four along with it. Today was a day unlike any I have ever seen here. It's hot — scaldingly hot. It's humid. It's bright and sunny, and the birds are singing as if their lives depend upon it. I've got every window open that I can find. I've been half-heartedly cleaning my room, and so there is a fine layer of sweat forming on my skin. I've been digesting message log sizes on multiple datacenters around the world. And it's almost dinnertime.

Combined, all of these things evoke a strong and sorrowful desire to go get something called a Johnny Mac and Three Cheeses at the Rocky River Brewing Company, a small brewpub that I will probably never see again. I recall with now-foreboding fondness of sunny afternoons in the summer and autumn months trekking over to Rocky River and having a grand old time ordering something unhealthy like a Johnny Mac off of the menu and having it with one or two of the heavily-rotated beers they had on tap. We'd dine until the summer sun finally set — or later — and then, usually on a Sunday night, try to do some department store shopping in the ten minutes before Target closed.

Good times and bad, babies and bath water. It's all the same from this far out.