I Wonder What He's Got That I Haven't Got?

I’ve thought about this entry all week. It’s a problem one for me – because I – well – oh dear this is embarrassing – I have a sub-par smeller. My dad does, too. We both have very thin noses with very small nasal passages, and I don’t know about him but mine is pretty generally stuffed up. It’s hard to breathe through. I think perhaps this skinniness of my nose is the reason that my sense of smell is somewhat dulled. I was told by my orthodontist that the reason my teeth and jaw were crooked was because of a childhood spent breathing through my open-hanging mouth. Oh, I can smell a tasty roasting turkey, or lemon oil rubbed into my piano, baking cookies, nice things like that. But it has to be pretty powerful for me to notice it. It takes work to breathe through my nose, and thereby to smell, and so my smell history is utterly uninteresting.

However. All is not lost. Because, you see, I am married to a bloodhound. Who is the son of a bloodhound. And they provide enough fun smell stories to fill at least a blog, if not a novel.

Darlin’ – well, he smells everything. And when I say everything, I mean the computer mouse, new socks, the tv, a fork. It’s a compulsion for Darlin’, part of the vital way he experiences his world. You and me? We can look at something, maybe touch it with our fingers, listen if it makes a noise, and we’ve got that thing down. We know what it is. It’s been registered, logged, referenced in our brains, and we’re good. For Darlin’ – it’s not officially a thing until he knows how it smells. Even if it’s not a particularly smelly thing, like a tv remote - not a thing that most people could get much scent off of, even with a good hard sniff. For Darlin’, there’s always something there, some whiff that the rest of us normal-nosed people can’t sense.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, in this case. Dad-of-Darlin’ was caught on video one Christmas, looking shifty-eyed, turning his head from side to side too casually, and when he saw that no one was looking (the camera was apparently hidden) – he picked up a new Christmas shirt, buried his face in it, and took a long hard sniff. Darlin’ was about 9 at the time, I think, and here 20 years later the family still can’t talk about it without cracking up.

Given this genetic background, chances are, our children will be like super jane was – always hooked to some strange smelly item, learning about their world through their noses. I’ll live vicariously through their smells. Because really, I’m ok with not being able to smell a remote control. Really. I’m fine with it. I’ll stick with the roasting turkey, the baking cookies, the lemon oil. Those’ll do me.

Peace and oh so smelly Love to all the noses reading this blog - G