Viet Ham

It’s been said that with one sniff, dogs can tell where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing, and your emotional state. While we humans may not have such keen olfactory senses, we do rely on scent to tell us a variety of things, namely whether we should put it in our mouths or flee.

Smells also trigger memories and associations. I never thought it was strange that my mom used to press her nose and lips up against my cheek and inhale forcefully. She once explained that doing so meant she loved me so much that she wanted to rip off a piece of my cheek with her forceful kiss, like a scavenger, gleefully making off with a morsel. It was an acceptable explanation to a six year old. To reciprocate, I’d kiss her back, taking in the smell of her skin, the food that she was cooking, and the particular scent of the laundromat downstairs from our apartment.

The next time I thought about the sniffy kiss happened as my nose was buried in the cheek of a girl I affectionately called “my little bit of Danang.” Danang is a big city in central Vietnam, think Dallas except take 2 feet off everyone’s height. I called her this, because my best friend was also from Danang and always pushing his own hobbit-sized brand. Where was I? Oh yes, still kissing and until this moment, still unconsciously sniffing. The realization of what I was doing struck me as so bizarre that I immediately stopped, and asked her, “Is that strange? The way I kiss you?”

“It’s a little strange, but I don’t mind,” she replied.

Skipping now to present day, my wife tells me that the first time I sniff-kissed her–she wondered, “why is this man snorting on me?” She has since gotten used to my squashing of my nose against her skin and scurrying off with a tasty morsel.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 at 9:01 pm and is filed under Evidential Ham, The Wife. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.