You remember that time our middle-school trip got stuck in Dulles Int’l for five hours?

It always surprises me how powerful tastes and smells are. Walking around Brown’s campus in Providence, the air would sometimes feel absolutely, 100% identical to the sea air at Topsail Beach, North Carolina, where I have gone with my family nearly every summer I can remember. For a brief moment, instead of walking down college hill past the Rock on the way to the Red Fez, I would be walking across the island, coming home from the beach. Always made Providence seem a little more familiar, when that happened.

Taste is just as powerful. This comes to mind because the tea they serve at the place where I’m working is the same brand they served in the airport lounges when I flew to England with my dad half a decade ago. If you travel you spend a lot of time in airport lounges, but rarely think about them… The flavor brought it that time vividly into focus: One time we saw Bobby McFarrin in the international departures lounge. Another occasion I was awed to discover that some of the fancier airline lounges even had showers.

Odd to be thinking about international travel while sitting at a desk!

Lest I post without including a link, here: a fairly accurate description of the English language.

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