smell ya later

i have a birth defect called Congenital Anosmia. but if you ask me i will tell you i was simply born without the sense of smell. and i do not think i have birth defect......no matter what the scientific world thinks. they do say my olfactory bulb (the part of the brain that is suppose to make sense of the sensory input from the nose) did not developed right early on in my mom's pregnancy. it comes down to not getting lucky in the genetic pool. (i do like my green eyes but could of received longer legs) yet with all of this known i think so little about my "situation" i have never even taken the time to learn how to pronounce the name of the condition properly.

yet as i was rolling around in bed for days and days last week i became extremely bored of tv and being delirious from my temperature i googled "born without the sense of smell" and i then sat for hours reading about my non-working nose.

i learned there are 2 million of us Americans with not functioning sniffers. and the ones which have written about how they "smell" the world sound just like me! i am giddy to see the wording they used........i thought i was the only one which thought gum smells "cold."

i joke sometimes saying "i never learned how to smell" when someone asks me to give something a sniff. they usually say "sorry" like they have hurt my feelings. but really my feelings have never been hurt by someone (even a best friend of 21 years) asks me to smell something. so Don't Worry About it Friends!

if i really think about it i feel left out at times. such as when everyone is enjoying the aromas of cookies baking and i have to wait till they are cooked and cool until i can enjoy them. or the thought of knowing i will never enjoy what my babies smell like after i give them a bath or i will never know what people mean when they say "puppy breath."

there is one thing i can join in the fun on which is rain......you can smell the rain coming or going and i can feel the rain in my nose. the air feels heavy and thick when i breath in. i know you probably are thinking "yeah that is what it feels like but not what it smells like" but to me this is as close as i will ever get to smelling a rain shower and it is still gosh darn special to me.

i do like it when individuals mention aromas to me because how else would i ever know a room smells like Christmas.....or my dog needs a bath.....and i really like it when i am told i smell good. because once again how in the world would i ever know. it can be annoying when i am having a conversation with someone and all i can think about is if i have bad breath.

so in short, do i think it is sad i will never know the smell of a clean house? sure. but really i think my non-working sniffer is just something which makes me special.

and the best road trip buddy.