The other day, I happened to drive by a Dick’s Sporting Goods store. I hadn’t been inside one in years, maybe even decades, yet I felt an uncontrollable urge to check it out. Dick’s used to be the place as a kid. There was no better feeling than shopping at Dick’s before a sports season, getting the latest bat, glove, cleats, clubs, racket, etc., and then using your new gear in the backyard or local field later that same day. The best Christmas stocking stuffers were often Dick’s gift cards. And you didn’t even need to buy anything when you went. You could just roam around, swing some bats, juggle a ball, and sink some putts on the practice green – that was an afternoon well spent.
I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed if I stopped in as an adult, but I also didn’t quite anticipate how nostalgic and happy the store would make me feel. Most of these feelings were triggered, believe it or not, by its smells.
Dick’s smells really good. It doesn’t smell like your typical box store – a ghastly combo of yellow onion BO, lemony cleaning products, and bleach. As you walk through the automatic doors, you are blasted with aromatic pleasure. The oddly satisfying smell of rubber. The fresh, leathery smell of baseball mitts. The “new car smell” coming from new sports gears.
But the smells aren’t just pleasing. They have this incredible power that unlocks old memories. Have you ever smelt something – maybe pancake batter bubbling on a griddle, charred hamburgers on a grill, freshly cut grass, or, my personal favorite, petrichor, the smell emanating from the ground after rain – and, immediately, a memory flashes across the projector of your mind? A memory you forgot you even remembered?
Dick’s unleashed a cascade of these sorts of memories, vignettes buried deep in my subconscious that would never have resurfaced in a typical day, which has never included a spontaneous trip to a sporting goods store. The first time I successfully threw a baseball to my dad. Scoring a touchdown in a game of backyard football with family friends. The twisted joy of slide-tackling a kid in soccer, winning the ball cleanly, and watching him complain to the ref. Wrapping a hockey stick with fresh tape before marching off to the pond. Lowering the basketball hoop in my driveway for a dunk contest against my brother. And even the bad ones — bad at the time, but amusing in retrospect — like being the last out in a baseball game.
We look back at our lives, and we piece together a story to tell ourselves why we did this, why we didn’t do that, why we entered a particular career field, or why we fell in love with a particular person. We do it so we can tell others, too. We do it to “get our story straight.” I suppose that’s just human nature. We feel the need to impose order on what might actually be a string of random accidents.
Yet your life story, with its structure and post-hoc rationalizations, will always omit the beautiful little fragments that filled you with joy in the moment and gave your life color. It’s like admiring a stained glass window or a painting. If you stand back far enough, the window and painting look perfectly designed. But if you stand close enough, you might lose sight of the image, but you see more intricate, nevertheless interesting, details. You are now able to see the texture of the glass and the air bubbles inside, the brush strokes and tiny swirls of paint.
My trip to Dick’s was like standing up close to the canvas of my life. Though I read a lot of books growing up, I probably spent just as much time, if not more, outdoors, playing sports. Dick’s and all of its glorious smells made me realize that my youth obsession with soccer, baseball, golf, and football was as important as my obsession with reading. That wouldn’t have occurred to me if I hadn’t stepped inside.
I ended up buying a soccer ball for $34. It looked retro, like the balls we used in the early 2000s in my local town rec league. It reminded me of practice in the evenings, bulky, plastic shin guards, and orange slices after the game. It was one of the best purchases I have ever made.
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