I've heard that scent is the sense most evocative of memories, and I won't deny that it's true. However, if ever a personal runner-up could be nominated, I'd say it's sound--music, rather. Every album/song I hear, I remember an exact "era" in my life, and all the good and bad that went along with it. I won't go a whole lot into how I react to this type of nostalgia (I have this weird thing where all nostalgia sort of automatically makes me wistful, probably because of the whole "hindsight is 20/20 thing"), but just scrolling through my iPod is about as a potent as flipping through a photo scrapbook for me. Wolfmother's "Cosmic Egg"? My job as assistant janitor in my community college's gym building, listening as I swept the halls and cleaned windows. Eiffel 65's "Europop"? My 2006 trip to France, as well as Mario Kart DS--interestingly enough, more because my brother listened to it while playing than I did, and the association somehow transferred over. Pretty much anything by Coldplay or Blink-182? Well... most of you might remember what I was going through around the end of senior year. It's at the point now where I'll sometimes contemplate deliberately listen to an album for the first time in a certain location, so as to skew its significance in a favorable direction.
Shoot, all this stuff is a story waiting to happen... I've had a few sci-fi/fantasy stories involving songs in the works, but I think my vanilla-themed "Creative" Writing class could still benefit from all the realistic details I can get out of musical nostalgia. Ahh, listening to ABBA in my grandparents' house as a little kid, playing Harvest Moon on the Game Boy Pocket my grandpa got for some reason...