I picked up some flowers at the store tonight for a close female acquaintance whose birthday is tomorrow. However, like usual, I asked several other customers checking out flowers to smell them for me to tell me which ones smell best. For many years now, I haven't been able to stop and smell the flowers, and they're not the only things I cannot smell. In fact, if I can smell it, it's pretty strong. Every time I get a physical, the doctor asks me what I did to my nose. It's obviously not drugs or normal damage, but it is damaged, permanently.
My loss of smell goes back to graduate school. As fate would have it, although I tested out of general chemistry lecture based on my AP exam score, they required me to take the lab. I was no priority for the teacher, and so it was my final semester before I managed to take general chemistry lab (think Chemistry 101). By that time, I'd taken advanced chemistry, microbiology and biochemistry courses, and so this was mostly elementary to me. The TA, knowing I knew at least as much about the class as she, took to vanishing during lab. If I'd known how it worked, I would have reported her for this, particularly since this led to my injury. One day, while doing organic functional groups, we were evolving bromine gas from bromobenzene, and a female pointed her flask in my face and asked, "Does this smell like bromine to you?" Enough bromine made it into my nose to scar it and me for life.
This causes problems and sometimes gives me peace. I can't smell for example the other gas they put into the natural gas so that you can tell there's a gas leak. Volatile chemicals at work do not register with my nose; I get a headache after a while which is how I know, but other people in the room often ask how I can stand the stench. This caused my injury earlier this year since I couldn't smell the chemical I inhaled that caused me to lose consciousness. On the other hand, I can't smell the methane emissions from humans with indigestion. Some unpalatable foods don't register, and the only reason I can smell vomit is because I know what hydrochloric acid smells like. When I can smell a forest fire or the pine trees, you know the scent is strong, and when I can smell your perfume I know you bathed in it. Working with essential volatiles (essential oils) in graduate school helped me train my nose to recognize flavor and scent components so I can pick out nuances between beers, wines, cheeses, and other foods and gave me back some sense of taste.
People tell me that scent and memory as well as scent and taste are linked, and so it's amazing that my memory works as well as it does. I tell people who accuse me of having no taste that they're exactly right. I have never really felt bitter about this, and the people who know me seem to understand that I don't pick out things based on scent. Only one woman I ever dated was a woman I could actually smell, and I remember to this day how she smelled and how much I loved that I could actually smell her and like it. I take that as a sign of chemical compatibility, although only a minor component, and it's something of which I am aware as I meet others.
My olfactory handicap reminds me that there are other ways to stop and enjoy the flowers. I plant them in my yard, make care not to crush them in the wilderness, and pay attention to their nuances and mathematical complexities when I have occasion to study them. I give them because I know what they mean, because they are a sign of life, a sign of new life and good life, and because I know that flowers are a committed step in plant development. Fortunately for me there is usually someone around to smell the flowers, to appreciate them, and to enjoy them. I wish it were someone in particular.
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