I hope that anybody who reads this text knows me well enough not to be surprised that I am anosmic. If you don’t know what anosmia is, go look it up real quick. I’ll be here when you get back.
If you are going to loose a sense, I guess olfactory is a pretty good choice. In terms of practicality, you can get by without it pretty easily. I do have to be somewhat extra conscious of body oder or breath and having a gas stove would make me pretty nervous. But it’s not like I am inhibited in any way during everyday life.
Anosmia is one of those things, those differences which are not apparent from the outside. I still have a nose, for example, and I can breath through it. It doesn’t usually come up till I’ve known someone for a little while then something (usually something stinky) brings it up. The exchange goes something like this.
Person: Hoo boy, Bob just ripped one. It smells like the inside of an ass in here.
Skaught: (shrug) I wouldn’t know. I have no sense of smell. (people give you the strangest looks if you say “anosmic” or other perfectly good words like “erudite” or “clemency”)
Person: Really? You can’t smell anything?
Skaught: No, nothing.
Person: Well, you’re lucky then.
Skaught: I guess.
At the end of the day, I truly am pretty apathetic about my lack of olfactory response. I am, what we say in the biz as, congenitally ansomic so I have no idea what I’m missing. My only reference for things like smell is how other people describe it. I assume farts are unpleasant only because everyone has always told me so. Of course, once people find out that I am different, I get the microscope questions.
I like the “You can’t smell anything?” question a bit, because I never say “I can’t smell that”. I always use the definitive phrase “I have no sense of smell”, which doesn’t leave much room for exceptions. Are people expecting me to respond “Oh, I can smell oranges” or “Nothing bad”? You know, I think if they just dropped the inflected question mark and said “You can’t smell anything” as a statement of fact, it would be more honest. The other person is replaying the facts and asking me to confirm they are understanding.
Another favorite is “What is that like for you?” I don’t bother answering this one, as it’s pretty meaningless. A good response would be “If no one had ever mentioned scent, I wouldn’t have even imagined it existed.” But that’s not what people are looking for in an answer.
“What does food taste like to you?” Another one, the totality of which makes meaningless. Food tastes like food to me. What does food taste like to you?
Behind many questions, there is an underlying assumption that I know what it is like on their side of the fence. Which, never having experienced scent, I can’t begin to fathom. There were days, mind you, when I was younger, during which I seriously considered the possibility that the concept of scent was just some joke everybody was trying to play on me. (The notable exception being my father, ripvansabre, who is also anosmic).
People tend to pass judgment as well, as if their opinion mattered. Their decision about whether I am unlucky or lucky is almost entirely situational, depending mostly on whether some one has just expelled some hydrongen sulfide into the room or not. From a purely utilitarian point of view, I am not noticeably hindered by my anosmia, so it’s all a matter of opinion at that point.