Smelling the past

They say smell is the strongest of all our senses..... I couldn't agree more.As a teenager growing up in a big city I really loved mens cologne with all the compliments and attention it brought from the the opposite sex.I guess I was a metrosexual and of course didn't know it.(cool)!!!
There was this one cologne that to me was lightning in a bottle,I mean liguid gold.It's name..NINO CERRUTI.The problem was, it was like a greek god on a mountain top almost impossible to get a bottle let alone have the honour of smelling it.As a matter of fact I only had one bottle my entire life and I had to go to NEW YORK to get it.
I recently turned 44 and before the big day my parents asked what I wanted for my birthday.I thought long and hard and finally said well I would love a certain cologne from the eighties but,Im sure they stopped making it.A week later while having breakfast with my parents my father said he looked around and found the cologne.He then went on too say he didn't buy it because I told him that he'll never be able to find it and even if he did it would be a much newer and different cologne.He told me I better go see for myself because the sales lady told him that this indeed was the one he was looking for.So off I went.
The first thing I noticed upon arriving at an actual colgne store in an upscale mall was the bottle wasn't the same.Now I knew the lady didn't (or did) know what she was talking about depending on how you look at it.She's an idiot or a thief;PERIOD.Of course I couldn't smell it without buying it because that meant breaking the seal.She was so insistent that was I was holding was indeed the original and they had changed the bottle many years ago,I decided to go for it.Worst comes to worst I have a brand new cologne that I'll probably like anyways.
The second my card was accepted I couldn't wait.I literally ripped the bottle from the box and sprayed...........It took about a half a second but once my brain had finished the long task of recognizing the smell,it was like a major levee had collapsed and instead of water rushing through me it was memories.I mean specific times and places as if I had been trasported through time and space in an instant.
Lawrence Kerr