How things smell matters.
“‘…What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;…'”
(Juliet, “Romeo and Juliet” , Shakespeare (ca. 1597))“‘Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!'”
(Lady Macbeth, “Macbeth” , Shakespeare (ca. 1606))“…Great masses of pale white clematis hang in sheets from the trees, cactus and aloe run riot among the glens, sweet scents of oleander float around the deep ravines, delicious perfumes of violets are wafted on every breeze from unseen and unsuspected gardens….”
(“The Mediterranean: Its Storied Cities and Venerable Ruins” , T. G. Bonney, E. A. R. Ball, H. D. Traill, Grant Allen, Arthur Griffiths, Robert Brown (1862))
I know that. I’ve done a fair amount of reading in my day, so I know quite a bit about odor. I gather that roses and other flowers smell sweet, and that blood has a distinctive odor.
But I don’t know it the way I know that a cloudless sky is blue. If my sight was as good as my sense of smell, I’d be legally blind.
There wasn’t one dramatic ‘aha’ moment when I realized that most folks have a whole world of perceptions that I don’t.
But a couple experiences do stand out.
A Brief Experience With Burning Sulfur
My folks got me a chemistry set in my preteens. It may or may not have included a sample of sulfur, and definitely did included a small alcohol burner.
This was back when manufacturers and retailers apparently assumed that parents had an ounce or two of sense, legislators weren’t trying to protect us from everything, and that’s another topic.
I’m not sure who got the idea. My guess is that my folks suggested it, since they seemed quite interested in seeing whether I could smell burning sulfur.
At any rate, we were in the kitchen of 818: a room in the northeast corner that was only as large as it needed to be. I’d lit the alcohol burner and set a small bit of sulfur over it. At least, that’s how I remember it.
Again, the room wasn’t large. My folks had, prudently, seen to it that windows were open. When the sulfur started burning, I saw the blue flame just fine. Odd: I don’t remember what the sulfur was in. Never mind.
Anyway, I should have detected the burning sulfur’s odor immediately. My folks definitely did, and assured me that I should.
I didn’t. I got a little closer, and still detected nothing. Other than what I could see, of course, and a little heat coming from the alcohol burner and sulfur.
Okay, maybe I needed to get closer. Finally, with my nose directly over the blue flame, I detected something: a sharp, unpleasant sensation in my nose and around my eyes.
We extinguished the flames, and that was the end of that experiment.
My folks and I talked about the situation, and decided that I really didn’t have much of a sense of smell.
A Day on a Lake
My folks spent a week at one of the lake resorts north of Park Rapids, Minnesota, each summer while I was growing up. That’s an annual routine I thoroughly enjoyed, and wasn’t able to replicate when my wife and I were raising our kids.
On one of these vacations, the three of us — me, Mom, and Dad — took a leisurely look around the lake in the sixteen footer that came with our cabin.
I don’t remember which year, what lake, or exactly how long the boat was. “Sixteen foot” is how Dad described it. The boat itself was wood, with an outboard motor at the back and two oars halfway along its length.
Where Every Prospect Pleases
We’d been noodling around for a while when Dad guided the boat in to a shallow bay. Shallow both in terms of how far back the bay went from the lake’s average shore, and in terms of depth. A great many reeds grew in the bay.
Dad had me at the front of the boat. Or I’d chosen that spot, I don’t remember which.
We were going slowly, not more than what would be comfortable walking speed on land. My folks mentioned that there was a distinct smell in the air. Well, of course. Where else would a smell be.
The point is that they asked me if I noticed it.
I didn’t.
I’d noticed the blue sky, the white clouds, the sunshine glinting on water, the reeds, the trees lining the bay.
I heard the boat’s motor — I’ve seen the sound outboard motors make described as a hum, roar, or whine. Understandable: but to me their sound is more like a buzz. Or maybe a Bronx cheer or raspberry.
I felt the boat’s gentle rocking, and the sun’s warmth.
In short, I’d noticed all the details of a beautiful summer day on a Minnesota lake.
Nearly all, that is. I’d been taking in the sights, sounds, and sensations — I’ve noticed, by the way, that poets often focus on sights and sounds:
“…The small birds twitter
The lake doth glitter….”
(“The Cock is crowing” , William Wordsworth (1815))
Make that 19th century poets I’ve run across. I get the impression that more up-to-date poets would focus on what my parents smelled — and I didn’t.
And Only Fish are Stinky
My parents insisted that I should be smelling something, so I paid careful attention to the air, breathing in deeply.
Sure enough, there was something distinctive about the olfactory ambience. Something not pleasant.
Right around that time, I looked down at the reed-filled water.
There was a dead fish floating right off the boat’s bow. And another next to it, with more filling in most of the blank spots between reeds.
I mentioned this to my parents.
Dad turned the boat around and we left that little bay.
Living in a Mostly-Scentless World
One of the perks that come with writing these ‘family stories’ is a reason for rummaging around in my mind’s archives.
Not only do I enjoy rummaging through archives, inner and otherwise, occasionally I’ll run across something that corrects a perception I thought was accurate; but isn’t.
Like me having no sense of smell. Maybe.
Getting Technical
Anosmia, ‘smell blindness’, being unable to detect smells, comes in a few flavors.
There’s just plain anosmia, being unable to detect one or more smells.
Then there’s hyposmia, which is the same thing except that the odors get detected: just not very well.
Anosmia can be acquired or congenital.
There’s a fair number of ways someone can lose their sense of smell. Like having COVID-19, for example. I’ve put a few links in a footnote.1 If you want me to talk about this at some point, let me know in a comment.
‘Smell blindness’ comes with downsides.
For example, my wife had me promise that I’d have the gas feed to our house shut off if she dies before I do. That’s not a downside, but not being able to smell the stink that’s put in commercial gas is.
Some folks have been looking at the social angle of lacking a sense of smell. Makes sense. But for someone like me, it’s just one more item I deal with when interacting with folks: and not even close to the top of the list.2
Leaves, Genes, and Anesthetic
Back in December I said that “I have no sense of smell”. That may not be accurate, although at that moment it seemed so. Lying isn’t the same as unintentionally making an inaccurate statement, although the result’s the same. And that’s yet another topic. Several.
I love the Christmas season. It’s also the time of year when, as my wife put it, I ‘get weird’. That’s something I’ll be talking about when I’m feeling a lot less, well, weird. Good grief, I’ve wandered off-topic again.
I may not be quite anosmic.
Like I said earlier, I could tell there was something off about the air above those dead fish.
Decades later, as an adult, I was visiting Dad on the homestead. Our conversation turned to the sense of smell. His wasn’t any too keen, either, so maybe it’s in our genes.
We were outside. Dad leaned over, picked a handful of some plant’s leaves and blossoms: or maybe they’d gone to seed by then. Rubbing what he’d picked between his palms, he cupped his hands and had me take a sniff.
I could tell that the air between his cupped hands was a trifle warm, but that was about it. After a few more tries, I thought maybe I could detect something: and told Dad.
That, and the burning sulfur, is as close as I’ve come to having a formal diagnosis of my sense of smell.
Another ‘I smell something’ experience happened just before one of those operations I had as a child.
Anesthesia masks were opaque in those days. This one looked really big as a medico put it over my face. Right before the lights, subjectively, went out, I smelled something very minty: like the light green mint candy at some wedding reception I’d been at as a child.
My oldest daughter wondered if the anesthetic might have contained menthol. I said maybe the minty smell happened when my brain, while going into sleep mode, grabbed the first label at hand and slapped it on the incoming olfactory data.
I figure that the minty maybe-odor will remain a mystery.
Now, finally, the usual more-or-less-related family stories:
- “My Oak Tree and Its Travels”
(March 1, 2025) - “Life Lessons: Grocery Bags and a Bottle of Ketchup”
(February 15, 2025) - “A Crate of Oranges”
(February 1, 2025) - “Early Diagnosis, Tardy Treatment, and a Gimpy Hip”
(January 25, 2025) - “My Wife and I: A Fragrant Memory”
(December 14, 2024)
1 What we’re learning about how we smell:
- Wikipedia
- PubMed Central / National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health
- “Olfactory Dysfunction in Mental Illness” ; Concepció Marin, Isam Alobid, Mireya Fuentes, Mauricio López-Chacón, Joaquim Mullol; Current Allergy and Asthma Reports (January 25, 2023)
- “Human Olfaction without Apparent Olfactory Bulbs” ; Tali Weiss, Timna Soroka, Lior Gorodisky, Sagit Shushan, Kobi Snitz, Reut Weissgross, Edna Furman-Haran, Thijs Dhollander, Noam Sobel; Neuron (January 8, 2020)
- “Congenital Agenesis of the Olfactory Bulbs: What to Suspect?” ; Isabel Costa, Berta Rodrigues, Luís Dias Sr.; Cureus (January 12, 2021)
- Wikipedia
- PubMed Central / National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health
- “Experiences of living without a sense of smell: Like ‘Being Behind Glass’” ; Lorenzo D Stafford, Karl Nunkoosing, Mark Haydon-Laurelut, Michael Fisher; PLoS One (October 19, 2023)
- “Olfactory Impairment and Close Social Relationships. A Narrative Review” ; Anna Blomkvist, Marlise Hofer; Chemical Senses (August 5, 2021)
- On the upside, my life hasn’t been boring
The start of this got me reminded of when I had to read an essay about the sense of smell for a class in my uni’s English Creative Writing course. There I learned about how the sense of smell is connected to the sense of taste and about how people struggle to find absolute rather than relative descriptions of smell.
As for smells I struggle to sense, I think I got one at least, and it is the smell of recently spoiled rice. Or maybe recently spoiled food in general, if the way I fed myself and my youngest brother spoiled corned beef and rice once is any indication, though that might be more me neglecting ourselves. Still, I feel the struggle especially when my parents tell me to check the integrity of food via smell like I can smell it as easily as they can.
I’ve run into the same linkage of taste and smell. My wife figures I don’t taste the same things she and others do: or, rather, don’t taste them the same way. She’s probably right. So are the folks who note that absolute descriptions of smell are – challenging, at best.
The spoiled food thing – indeed, yes. That’s a very practical example of the importance of odor. The good news is that there are (I gather) other ways to tell if something’s ‘off’. Sometimes it ‘doesn’t look right’, but mostly – I don’t pick the food we eat. Safer for everyone that way. !!
And – – – yeah. I didn’t have that ‘use a sense which you do not have’ issue with my parents – – – but it did come up when I was getting a teaching degree. Seems that teachers are expected to ***smell*** a variety of substances – – – and I’m drifting off-topic.
Thanks for responding – and adding facets to this topic.
You’re very welcome again, Mr. Gill!