Smell

For as long as I can recall, I have had little or no sense of smell. I can smell but two things – a freshly opened can of coffee and a freshly opened jar of peanut butter. Once, while driving – and this is somewhat surprising for reasons I'll get into later – I smelled smoke from burning leaves as it wafted over the highway.

This apparent lack of a sense (don't say it!) has for the most part, not been a huge issue for me. I've had friends tell me that I should "get that checked out," and I suppose I've considered it from time to time, but I've not ever felt that disabled by my inability to smell – to detect odors, that is.

I have, unfortunately, had the ability to smell.

Perhaps the former led to the latter...

Sometimes the most difficult lessons we learn present themselves to us during the four years we spend in high school. I'm probably lucky that I went to high school when I did, as even the tiniest pimple seems to create extreme psychological distress for teenagers these days, sending them into fits of depression and suicidal behaviour.

For me, I recall it almost as if it were yesterday: It was my sophomore year; it was almost time to go to class. It was near the east stairs of the school's cafeteria when (the late) Warren Stacy decided he needed to say, "Why don't you take a bath!" No... it wasn't a question.

At that instant, I didn't quite know what he meant. But then it began to roll over me like a wave.

Of course, I didn't get it. I had bathed the night before. (At the time, we didn't have a shower in our house, so I'd take baths every night.) I recall that in my battle with acne, I'd washed my face that morning and left the soap to dry on my face (the ideas we come up with to fight that bastard acne!) – perhaps that was what prompted Warren's attack...

No... it could mean only one thing — I had body odor. B-O!

I recall the deodorant commercials at the time that were pretty malevolent towards those with (imagine the thundering deific voice echoing in your ear) "B-O" and it became very clear to me that those commercials had me as their target market.

It's funny how one tiny incident can change so much. It turned me into a fairly paranoid kid, thinking that every little whisper might be about me and my problem. In a time in which fitting in is about the only concern for most teenagers, I was not fitting in in the worst possible way.

I remain surprised to this day, actually, that if I'd had a body odor problem that my mother wouldn't have said something. She has always had the nose of a bloodhound and didn't have any qualms about telling me (or my brothers) what was wrong with us.

When I look back on Warren's lack of tact, I always wish – with the ability to turn back time – that my best friend from grade school, Bob Gladieux, would have taken me aside and said, "Listen, Pat..." I suppose that guilt by association might have had something to do with his decision to not reach out. Maybe it was awkward for him. Or, maybe Bob really didn't like me much after all.

While Warren's wake-up call got me to using deodorant (and boy, did I spray, paint and roll it on!), it didn't do much to change the treatment I got. Later that year, Tim Wiegand made an Oh-my-gawd-you-reek sound as we headed down the stairs toward the library one day.

But then, I had no way of knowing if he was being truthful or being hurtful (though I suspected the latter)... I didn't know what B-O smelled like on anyone else, much less myself, so it's not like I could take a whiff under my arm to meter my offensive levels. No doubt, I layered the deodorant on even thicker the next day. For me, fighting body odor was like being blindfolded and given a stick to swing at a piñata that I'd been told was hanging right in front of me.

Somehow I weathered the storm and made it to graduation without further incident, although I still panic a bit if I leave home in the morning without remembering to apply deodorant. Thanks, Warren!

As for my sense of smell, I have three regrets about not having a keen one.

One, I have often heard how memories are keyed by smells and with my seemingly endless interest in recalling my past, I wish I had one more device for helping my ever-thinning memory reach back in time.

Two, once – just once – I'd like to smell the nape of a woman's neck.

Three, I wish I had the ability to recognize when something is burning – it scares me to think that my home could be going up in flames and that I have to rely on smoke detectors to know it.

"But Pat," you say... "you already said you could smell smoke!"

I smelled smoke once and once only – as related back at the beginning of this meaandering post. When it comes to safety, however, I wouldn't trust my nose to be of much help.

While I was in college, I would often bake potatoes using a toaster oven, and one day while preparing to work on a term paper, I turned on the toaster oven, tossed in the potato and got to work. In an hour or so the potato would be ready, right? The oven's timer would let me know, so I didn't think much about it once into the thick of my paper.

From time to time, I'd look up from the typewriter and gaze out the sliding glass door of our apartment, either to ponder an idea or merely to give myself a break. At one point, something looked different. The view out the window, for some reason, looked a little hazy. I paid it little mind, however, and plodded on.

Eventually, I had to go to my room for something and as I entered, I found an even hazier appearance there, but still thought I was just seeing things. As I returned to my chair in the living room, however, I quickly noticed what the problem was – smoke was billowing – rippling from the toaster oven. I (or my roommate) had inadvertently left the on-off light timer (which we used for turning the coffeemaker on in the morning) on top of the oven. It was plastic and didn't do a very good job of holding up to the heat.

I can't recall much else, except that my upstairs neightbor came home shortly after I took care of the disaster. I'm guessing that she and her roommate smelled it for a while after that. I don't know how long my roomie continued to smell it.

Smell.