I've heard that of all the senses, that of smell is the most evocative, but I'd never really experienced anything to confirm it until yesterday. I was in one of the newer courthouses in downtown Tampa, when I caught a whiff of... something. New vinyl tiles, I suspect, from the redolence of formaldehyde.

Immediately, my mind conjured up images of Copernicus Hall at Central Connecticut State University, through which halls I had roamed as a child just after construction had been completed (and then again years later as a college student). Not only could I see the hallways (from the vantage point of a child), I could feel their rough, corrugated cement walls as though I were running my hands over them in the present day.

The clarity of the memory was amazing, from the subtle pattern in the yellow third-floor tiles, to the chrome hinges on the door of the big walk-in refrigerator in the biology department hall. (When Star Trek: The Motion Sickness came out, I bought a book of stickers based on shipboard graphics from the movie; I gave my father a "Cryogenic Storage" sticker, which he placed on that door, under the small glass window. It was still there as of a few years ago; I wonder if it still is?)

As I get older and my earlier memories retreat further into the fog of time, it's astonishing to have one resurrected with such immediacy, by no more complex a catalyst than a faint, briefly registered scent.