Cotton candy perfume

Here’s a bit of psychology for you. There’s a structure in the brain, called the limbic system, which is (as far as my first year course is concerned) the basic location of emotions. Completely unrelated to the limbic system is the thalamus, a central station for your senses that passes information on to the other part of your brain. So, the signals processed by your eye go to the thalamus, which sends them to your primary visual cortex. However, your sense of smell DOESN’T go through the thalamus - it goes straight to your limbic system, creating a pretty close association between scents and emotions.

        So I was going into my psychology lecture, and a girl in front of me was wearing a lot of cotton candy perfume. I was pretty confused for half a second (as in, where am I, what am I doing here), and then I came back and started to wonder why anyone would wear cotton candy perfume - would you be attracted to someone who smelled like a carnival? When we got into the class and I walked past her to find a seat, I was starting to enjoy the cotton candy smell in a weird kind of way. Still kind of confused about it, trying to form a proper sentence to explain my confusion, and yet there was a kind of attraction to it.

        I got to my seat, sat down, and while I was waiting for the lecture to start I worked on sending Britt a text about how cotton candy perfume confuses me. I settled on “you know what I hate? People who wear cotton candy perfume. It’s so confusing when they walk by :(” She replied and asked me why it was confusing, which I had to think about, and ended up saying “because it’s like wtf, cotton candy!? And I’m able to be confused for half a second by perfume.” Her response: “I used cotton candy stuff all the time. I always sprayed my room with cotton candy perfume.”

        I don’t want to beat you over the head with the significance of that and go into too much detail, but it’s so cool! As I told her, I didn’t remember that she always sprayed her room with cotton candy perfume. I couldn’t have told you that, if you’d asked what her room smelled like. But my brain knew it, and obviously I have a pretty strong emotional association with her room, because we hung out there a lot. So I smell someone wearing cotton candy perfume, and for half a second I’m just bewildered because cotton candy perfume = her room, as far as my nose is concerned. Then I lash out, questioning the reaction, and then it’s kinda pleasant and attractive.

        So now you know how to make yourself strangely alluring to me. Though if you’re actually going to try that, go with vanilla instead. So now you know that psychology is legit! I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. And this is in no way a plug for my excellent repository of notes.