Why do the students smell the paper in Fast Times at Ridgemont high?

Question

i was watching the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High and mr hand passes out a handout to his students and i notice they all smell the paper...anyone know why they do that?

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

I was a teacher, and I can guarantee that I never saw one student smell a mimeographed paper. No teacher ever wanted to smell them either. It's a horrible smell that can make you choke! It was dreadful having to work with the stuff. Thank goodness mimeograph machines are history! They were an unbelievable pain to work with. Thank goodness for photocopiers, which have little or no scent.

Again, the students I saw would be "EWWWWW! Stink!" They certainly never stuck their noses to the paper.

When I saw this in the movie, I thought, "They must be nuts!" I still think that when I see that bit.

Asker's Rating:

Asker's Comment:

dope

Answer 2

You ever smell freshly photocopied paper? Maybe it has changed but when I was in school we got freshly photocopied paper for tests and it had a very distinctive smell.
It is sort of like smelling inside of a new car.

Answer 3

Tests used to be printed up with ditto machines that used rubbing alcohol to transfer pigment... sniffing the fumes from the freshly printed papers would generate a quick buzz.

Answer 4

I forget what the old machines are called, but there was this old way of making copies where you had to manually roll this device that would make duplicates of a sheet of paper and the ink was believed to give you a buzz if you sniffed it when it was still wet or fresh.

Answer 5

Mimeograph machines made copies "back in the day"...the chemicals used would give you a quick buzz when sniffed.

Answer 6

You must be too young to know what a mimeograph machine was. I can't explain it, but the chemicals used to transfer the image/text to paper smelled really really good.

I don't know if those machines even exist any more.
We ALWAYS smelled the papers, just like in the movie!

To MystMoonstruck below: I don't know where or when you were a teacher or why it was so different in your school than in mine (and obviously the schools the people associated with that movie went to), but I can tell you that we ALL smelled the papers. It was very much like Scott, the first responder above stated, like 'New Car' smell (but unlike the other responders, there was never a buzz from it) . Not only that, but I worked in my Jr. High office and I ran the mimeograph machine, and I seriously loved the smell even running it for a few hours a day.

Answer 7

Laser printers did away with that. Like other said, there used to be mimeograph machines and the fresh printed paper had this unique smell.

It was something we all did back then.