The aroma of rehydrated eggs, freeze dried hash browns and ugh

I traverse much of Bloomington-Normal while biking into campus each morning. Trees, buildings, streets, cars, pedestrians, blocks and neighborhoods all pass by. Fallen leaves litter the ground. Nightly rains linger on the pavement. Squirrels and possums with either faulty depth perception or timing skills remain as monuments to their poor street crossing decisions. The scents of the morning mingle, and shifting winds waft them about me, highlighting the mulch from a yard one moment, the exhaust from a bus the next. Some are more odiforous than others, some milder, some more pleasantly aromatic. And every now and then a whiff from the past tickles my olfactory system. One in particular has been prominent as of late: an elementary school's cafeteria. Hard at work delivering a morning meal and preparing the afternoon's, the kitchen staff's efforts permeate the air and condense in the chill of early hours. I can almost taste the food... and it's still just as gross as I remember it.

Perhaps it's the hallmark of the most highly processed of the lowest quality of food that finds its way to our schools or maybe has something to do with deep rooted memories of childhood. Not sure if the nausa is overpowering the nostalgia or if they work in concert. It's possible that the desire for freedom--a young boy's idea of freedom that is: to play with friends, swing from monkey bars, hide in fields, not sit unless it involves getting his pants dirty, not listen unless it's to the wind whipping leaves across the blacktop--wells up in reaction to the scent long associated with imprisonment. Smell is the oldest of our senses, most directly tied into emotion and memory. It would make sense that an aroma from childhood would dredge up the feelings and memories from that time, and no time was more depressing than the first sounding of the bell, when the most school lay before me, and the cafeteria smell hung heavy on the playground.