No, not his Easter candies, though he was one of their early spokespersons:

Rather, I write of our tendency as humans to be like the famous scientist’s dogs and respond reflexively to a stimulus. Specifically, when cleaning the refrigerator today, I accidentally knocked over a bottle of soy sauce, the cap to which had not been secured by my lovely girlfriend, Katie (to whom I have repeatedly suggested “Cap School,” wherein she and I practice securing the caps on various bottles). The soy sauce spilled onto the kitchen floor and the smell instantly reminded me of…sports cars and leather bucket seats.

You see, on one trip to the grocery store with my mother when I was around nine years old, she bought me a magazine filled with images of Ferraris, Lamborghinis—basically, all sorts of cars that I thought were really cool. It was in the bag with the other groceries and I couldn’t wait to bring it inside and read it. (I wouldn’t feel that way about a magazine for another few—actually, I didn’t have to wait long.) As I was carrying the groceries inside, I somehow managed to drop the bag, and a bottle of soy sauce shattered, soaking my magazine. I brought the magazine inside, dried it out, and pored over it for the next several months. The sight of a Lamborghini Countach, of leather bucket seats, and the smell of soy sauce are now inseparable to me. If you put me in one of those cars and it smelled like Soy Sauce, I probably wouldn’t give it a second thought.

This kind of conditioning isn’t unusual. I’m sure lots of people, like me, grow hungry at the smell of charcoal and lighter fluid, despite the fact that we wouldn’t want to ingest either.

Funny animals, we humans. Easily fooled.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 9:32 am and is filed under random musings. 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.