Cinnamon and cloves

I rode school buses to school for most of my student education. These are interesting inventions. A big tube of kids on wheels, no seat belts, a high center of gravity. When one is small, three can easily fit into a seat. When one gets to high school, and is still having to ride in one of these things, there's just not enough room to be sitting next to someone else.

There were several times on a bus, or at school, one of us kids would become ill and lose whatever contents we had in our stomach. Once in a while it would cause a chain reaction. A practiced bus driver would quickly grab a bag of whatever they used and would pour it onto the mess. The combined smell was something of cinnamon and cloves, with undertones of hork. It was so distinctive, one of my classmates wrote about this in a creative writing class some 7 years later, and I still remember it. I am occasionally flashed back into those moments when I eat a desert called "Apple Crisp", or anything with cinnamon and oatmeal. Wintery holiday seasons are good times.

When Kris and I were dating, she watched me sign a credit card bill for dinner, and asked me about my mysterious middle name.

her: What's the E of your middle initial stand for?
me: Exceptional.
her: No really.
me: Ok. Extraordinary.
her: Come on.
me: Fine. It's Eloquent.
her: Edward?
me: No.
her: Ernie?
me: No.
her: No? Not Ernie?
me: No.
her: Eric?
me: No.
her: Ezekial?
me: ...
her: Emily?
me: (blink)
her: Seriously, I give up.

It was a year before she finally found out by reading it on my new Arizona driver's license. I had forgotten I hadn't told her. My annoying behavior was more just a self-amusing game than anything else. It's a name that has been shared by a few members in my extended family, and I'm really quite proud to have it.

We've started to exhaust the American supplies we carried into Switzerland, and we're starting to slowly replace them from local stores. The other day, Kris bought me some new deodorant. I was of course over-using the old American antiperspirant because I'm a filthy sweat-beast at work these days, with no air conditioning, working in a sealed building located in an industrial district, a building with horrible circulation, and I have no hope of finding a refrigerator big enough to fit my dehydrating corpse.

I guess this is available in the States. It's new, and it has English words on it, so maybe that's why she picked it. I started using this new deodorant, and oddly the old memories of a short creative story titled "Cinnamon Yuck" came pouring back. It's not really what I want to smell like, considering this scent has a very specific trigger for me. Funny the power of what a simple smell can do.

I'm a curious sort. I read the label. All of the usual chemicals and additives with exaggerated names were recognized, save one. Eugenol. I had to look this one up on wikipedia. I learned it's extracted from the oils of cinnamon and cloves. Here's another purchased-in-Switzerland product I'm rubbing on my body that I am no longer comfortable with.

And yes, Eugene is my middle name.