Remember Scratch N’ Sniff stickers? If you don’t, then I’m sorry for you, either for your being born too late or for your terrible misfortune of being raised by wolves under a rock.

For those of us that do remember rubbing the scent genie out of its goofily illustrated, circular adhesive bottle on trapper keepers or designated sticker zones of preference, you know, right? You know the joy of scratching and scrubbing the blessed magical, chemically questionable fragrance out of those magical discs of nasal wishes come true. Sometime wishes turned curse really, if we’re being honest. Scratch N’ Sniff stickers were the original Bertie Botts Every Flavor Bean, where what you got was a decidedly unpredictable experience.

But we “grew up”, right? Shhhhhh. Your secret is safe with me if you only got bigger but didn’t submit to the travesty of being upwardly grown. And maybe we had kids of our own while we got larger, but we still remember, some of us. The thrill of pealing off a sticker, laying it in its place and then scrubbing it like our lives and noses depended on it! Priceless. Even when it was a funky and weird smell. It was OUR smell. We scratched it out!

Now we have kids. Maybe these aren’t the scents we want to scratch and sniff, but they’re the whiffs that we smell now. The ones we KNOW beyond all other knowing.