There are certain things in life where people have almost the exact same word association as you would when you mention a particular item/person/movie.  Not that this happens any more, but 15 years ago if anyone said the name “Clara Peller” you would be obligated to yell “Where’s the beef?!”  If someone mentions the movie Dances With Wolves, I have no choice but to make my index fingers like horns on my head, tilt my ear horizontal to the ground and say “Tatonka”.  Are there any middle aged white guys out there, if someone begins to make that mechanical breathing sound, that can resist spouting the requisite phrase “Luuuuuke, I am your faaaather” as if they really had the same voice as James Earl Jones?

Unfortunately, at least for memories’ sake, one of these Instant Associations has already stopped well over a decade ago.  Is there anyone age over 25 that doesn’t recall what a mimeograph machine is?  I wonder what the cutoff date for the age of remembrance is for those kinds of copies.  Do any schools still use them or have laser printers taken over everywhere?  I’m sure I’d get a blank stare from my nephews and nieces if I asked them if they knew what I was talking about.

Back to the matter at hand, what is the one thing you associate immediately with a mimeographed copy?  The smell!!!  Who among us didn’t, especially when the copies were freshly made, inhale the wonderfully noxious and irresistible odor emanating from that chalky blue/purple ink.  Mention to anyone the word “mimeograph” in a causal conversation (I did) and you’re guaranteed to have someone comment on the smell.

It was a crapshoot when you got tests in school that used these sheets.  Depending on how old the original copy was, the copies of that copy sometimes were almost blurry beyond recognition.  While I still am blessed with 20/20 vision, I must imagine that a blurry mimeographed copy must be what a regular clear copy looks like to someone who isn’t wearing their glasses.  For you spectacled folk, am I correct in this assumption?