Collected Item: “Pumpkin Spice Candles”
Give your story a title.
Pumpkin Spice Candles
What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?
Text story
Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.
One thing that captures a sensory memory that relates to the COVID-19 pandemic for me is candles, specifically pumpkin spice candles. My wife and myself, like many other people, spent the majority of 2020 shut inside our home. Prior to this pandemic, we would often go out 3-4 nights a week. Nothing crazy, of course. Dinner, bowling, movie, etc. Typical married couple dates. However, once we were shut inside our house, we had to find other little things to occupy our time so we wouldn’t go stir crazy. My wife started buying a lot of scented candles from Amazon, and her favorite was pumpkin spice. I swear, my apartment smelled like pumpkin spice from about April of 2020 to January of 2021. The scent helped her relax, and it made me happy to know that she was finding ways to keep herself settled and centered. Now, whenever I’m out somewhere and catch a scent of pumpkin, I think of the two of us trapped in the apartment but working together to make the whole experience into a positive. I know that this is probably more of a sentimental story than what we were supposed to write, but this is what first came to my mind when I saw this assignment.
Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?
Arizona State University, HST 643, Sensory History
Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)
Justin Bailey
Give this story a date.
2020-04-01