This is going to seem a bit weird. Probably not as much to people who don't know me.

It really is amazing how a particular sense can mess you up. Sense...you know...sight, touch, etc.

There's this one woman, who I will always connect with my sense of smell...no, not because she smelled like cabbage...or tree bark...or ass. She used something...I don't know specificaly...but it was something in the pachouli family. Now, easy...I know...pachouli...dead head, hippie...doesn't matter. Through her I found out that scent does something to me. Now she had the scent...as well as a lesbian friend...and even though I wasn't attracted to her and I didn't have that "because she likes chicks I like her" syndrome working...but when she wore something that was in the pachouli family...I found myself looking for more hugs than usual. But I digress...I have other stories about the pachouli lesbian...but not now...

So the person I equate with this smell...is the one and only person I have ever just poured out my soul to. I mean movie-like, let it all loose, I love you because...that kinda thing.

But of course that worked out as well as every other episode...

So fast forward about...oh...10 or so years. Pachouli still hits me upside the head. I can be uptight, political guy, but that smell puts Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get it On" in my head.

In the rent-paying job I have right now, I work for an agency that (allegedly) helps adolescents in need. Some are emotionally disturbed, some are just from families from hell (worse than you can imagine). But within the job is the occasional physical restraint. It's a last resort (allegedly) but to keep it as safe as possible there are specific techniques and we need to have a review (called an "update") of our skills every 6 months.

I've been in a million of these updates and there's a bunch of funky stories, including the fat chick who insisted on chowing on a bag of doughnuts during an update, or the time I had a chunk of hair ripped out of my already balding head when a guy thought it would be cool to grab onto my hair for real.

Anyway, I'm in my most recent update and we role play...situations where different restraint techniques are necessary. And in one of those, I'm playing the role of the child and I get restrained...no biggie...been there...done that....

So as I'm getting restrained...I hit the floor...and next to us is one of my co-workers...who smells like pachouli. Just rocked my world. I've been equating that specific sense with a love long lost...what could have been...and I'm hit with that aroma from a large black man as I'm being manhandled to the ground by two other men. Not cool.

This is not a case of a Rose by any other name...