The scratch-and-sniff dill pickle came unglued from my brother's and my childhood copy of Little Bunny Follows His Nose.
It doesn't smell anymore, which is funny because it was Mother Racoon's pickle that always used to overpower Bee's rose, Mouse's strawberry jam, Squirrel's pine needles, Bird's peach, and, most regrettably, Mommy Bunny's chocolate mint cookie.
Their quality was a far cry from the small round ones that every child of the 80s collected in a puffy, spiral-bound album.
Instead of using our fingers to text, we used them to activate synthetically spot-on smells--like fried chicken, roller skate leather, and leaves--marveling at such groundbreaking technology.
How wonderfully weird and simple we were!
We all had our personal favorites. From the edible--like grape jelly, caramel apple, and spaghetti; to the non-edible--like soap, green lawn, and bandage.
Then there were those that we'd never admit to huffing in private--like gasoline, rope, print out, wood, cave, rubber tire, or...bone.
Surely such preferences would have made good predictors of criminal activity before the dawn of computers.
Or, maybe if we still had our noses buried in our sticker books, then that wouldn't be quite such an issue.