My father is a brilliant chemist. He has tons of his own discoveries and patented inventions in organic chemistry. Me on the other hand, while being his daughter is a complete imbecile in Chemistry, which frustrated my dad tremendously, when I was in school. He couldn’t understand how simple chemical formulas (in his opinion) couldn’t settle in my head. No matter what he did, trying to ignite my interest in chemistry, it didn’t click with me at all.
To my excuse, I could absolutely assure you that I’m not imbecile, just didn’t feel like I needed that knowledge at all. I intentionally didn’t let my brain absorb it even if my life would’ve depended on it. For example, I still waiting when those algebra algorithms will help me in life! Finally, my dad found some solace to know that genius genes usually skip a generation in inheritance, and let me and my artistic brain 🧠 develop different skills and knowledge that I was interested in.
My nihilistic point is based on the strong opinion that I’m done my part with chemistry game. When other kids played with toys, I came over to my parents’ laboratories and played with all those glass vials, flasks and containers. I had my own lab at home too and some magical ingredients to show other kids hocus-pocus: take a container with transparent liquid, pour another transparent liquid in and liquid becomes fuchsia color transparent liquid!
Not wowed yet? OK - Then add another transparent liquid to fuchsia cocktail and it turns back to water like transparent liquid again. Success was guaranteed. Believe me, I didn’t earn my nickname Witch for nothing!
(Disclaimer: Nobody was harmed during those experiments. Although it wasn’t food colors or anything like that, Chemicals such as very diluted HCL ( Hydrogen chloride) were real but harmless to use. Do you know what other was? I'm curious... Let me know. Anyway I'll tell you later.).
Fan fact: smells of chemicals feel like home to me, because I lived all my life in close vicinity to a Chemical Plant, where my parents worked in research labs. So when I’m driving by Chemical Plant on NJ Turnpike I often try to open the window and smell it… Weird? Yes, it is! Ha-ha! It’s my memory lane and there is nothing I can’t do about that.
So, now that we established that I uniquely dumb in science of chemistry I must inform everyone that I’m up for a chemistry challenge since I seriously interesting to create my own perfume. I’m obsessed with this idea. I don’t know if I should blame genetics, but common perfumery knowledge didn’t satisfy me at all and started to dig all available olfactory information around and it just hits me: OMG! I should’ve paid more attention and listen to my dad and learn more about chemistry when I had a chance.
If you asked me did I say anything to my dad about my new hobby already? Nope, absolutely not looking forward to seeing his finger up to my nose with sounds A-ha! And hear the Told-You-So speech. News could wait!
Who knows if he would’ve insisted to pursue my career in chemistry maybe I could’ve end up as a Perfume connoisseur.
Now with my strong desire to learn about art of the essence creation, I feel like kid in the huge toy store and all those toys is yours to try. So many options and ingredients, oils and fixative, all those smart names like Benzoin, Iso E Super etc not scare me but instead entice me to continue to explore possibilities and learn a tricks of trade.
I invite you to come along on my adventure of exploring and creating my own perfume. Should be fun, don’t you 🤔 think?
*** Ok, Here is chemicals i used to impress non-chemist children.
First transparent components was very diluted Hydrogen chloride, HCl ,
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