I Really Like the Smell of Carbon Paper

Whenever I smell carbon paper, it reminds me of my mom’s office.

For those of you youngins, carbon paper is paper people used to put between sheets of paper so that when they press or type on the top sheet, it shows up on the second sheet. Before the days of laser printers and cheap copy machines, carbon paper was the defacto way to do things twice as fast or with half the work.

Well, when I was little, my mom’s office was swimming in carbon paper. I used to go to her office and the entire placed smelled like carbon paper. I would see people furiously working on multimillion dollar projects and I’d just be in awe, not even realizing how little stress I had in my life.

Slowly, as I grew older and as technology advanced, her office (and all offices) stopped using carbon paper.

Now, every once in a while I’ll see a sheet of carbon paper, smell it, and it will remind me of when I was little.

I think everyone has a weird scent that reminds them of their childhood, unfortunately some people haven’t found it.