Senseless (Part Two)

(See Previous Blog Entry for Part One)

One day, while working at my father’s electrical shop, my maniacal, brain-damaged brother approached me with a plastic jug that contained a clear liquid (well, mostly clear... it had plenty of visible bacteria particles floating in it to make it appear quite rancid and scary).

He held it up to me and made the following proclamation: “Man, this is wild! You have got to smell this! This is the worst-smelling water in the history of water. It is nasty!”

Well, how could I resist such a tempting offer?

He also warned me to take a big whiff of it in order to get the full effect, which I did, because I was just that smart.

Immediately, I clutched my head in a spastic fit of fury. I was quite sure that my nostrils and brain had simultaneously burst into flames (Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” depicts EXACTLY how I felt). I suffered thousands of seizures on the ground over the next 60 minutes or so and was convinced that I had snorted a pound of wet cement somehow.

If I had to describe the scent of it, I would go with “hot, painful death.” Yes. Hot, painful death was the last thing I smelled with a 100% working whiffer.

The Sense Police had struck (stealthily and invisibly) and I was the newly throned King of Pain. Damn you, Mr. Sting, and your spiky dirty blonde hair! Why don't you go help Tibet some more and leave me the Hell alone?

Ahem. Anyway, since that day I’ve never been able to smell particularly well (Oh, grow up -- you know what I mean). I never told my parents about The Ammonia Incident (thus I also didn't see a doctor) for fear of being grounded for a decade, or at the very least, being subjected to a barrage of scorn, ridicule and hysterical laughter. However, I did notice a steep decline in my sense of smell from that day on.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been with a large group of people who all gasped at how bad something smelled and I could only hope it wasn’t me.

Oftentimes I try to cover things up with a lie and a bout of bad acting: “Egad. One inhale of yonder scent and I feel as though The Devil himself has swarmed through my nasal cavities with malicious and odious intent!”

When I was younger, I actually stopped being bothered by cigarette smoke (unless I breathed it in directly) and I no longer enjoyed the savory scents of my favorite foods. I never considered it a tragedy, though, especially since I found myself able to eat intensely hot and spicy foods as my friends looked on with disbelieving envy.

As far as I know, there is no support group for people with non-working noses, so I never applied for my handicapped parking sticker.

Oddly enough, my sense of smell seems to have returned back slowly over time to the point where now I can smell most things again, although, to a much lesser degree than those around me. (Yay, bad smells stink again!)

In the end, the whole sordid affair left me with an important moral to always remember: The Sense Police are very, very real, so be careful when choosing a sense you deem to be less important than the others. Be sure to listen for their unholy squad car siren at all times. It goes: De Doo Doo Doo, De Da Da Da. That's all I'm going to say to you.

Except for one additional bit: if your older brother ever approaches you with an unnamed chemical and asks you to smell it, feel free to kick him in the jimmy and run like Hell.