I often find myself asking other folks what things smell like. Especially when I switched shampoos to Herbal Essences, everyone kept telling me my hair smelled great! I wanted to know what my hair smelled like, so I’d ask. But I never got an answer that would actually help me to understand. I got a lot of “Your hair smells fruity, like strawberries.”

“Well, what do strawberries smell like?”

“I don’t know…fruit?”

“Well, what does fruit smell like?”

“It smells fruity.”

“Well, what does that smell like?”

“Oh, would you look at the time… I’ve got to run!”
And that’s pretty much how any conversation went. That is, until I met my husband.

Back when we were dating, Alan (that’s my husband) and a friend of his (Gabrielle Idlet, I think) walked past someone tarring a road. Gabrielle made the comment that if she could ascribe a smell to a dentist’s drill, that would have to be it. Well, it was that comment that inspired Alan to begin finding ways to make smells more concrete (no pun intended). And over the course of a year, as a writing warm-up (he’s a writer), he’d pick a smell (usually something that I’d use, like my shampoo) and try to describe it. He came up with a whole system, which he describes in more detail on his website. At the end of the year, he collected all these descriptions and gave me a bound Dictionary of Smells as a Christmas present.

Here’s a sample of my favorite entry:

If Lemon had to pick one verb to subsist on for the rest of its days, that verb would be “tickle.” It is a younger scent, probably about three or four years old, if one could place it, and it would enjoy giggling. It comes out of nowhere to tackle you, and once you get over the initial shock it can be quite pleasant, even joyful. For a lot of people, though, Lemon doesn’t know when to quit. It’s not malicious, but like a small child who doesn’t understand when the game of tickling isn’t fun anymore, it just keeps coming. But you can’t deny it its enthusiasm. Also, by virtue of its sheer relentlessness, Lemon is often used in cleaners. It goes after other smells aggressively. When Lemon overtakes another smell, however, I don’t picture that smell submitting; I picture it running away. Level of Intensity: 10

Since smell is rather subjective, he’s been trying to get other people to send him their own smell entries. As of yet, no one has. So hey Olfies (people who can smell), if you’d like to contribute to the project visit my husband’s website and submit your own smelly entry.