Makes Scents to Me!

There’s no question that my hearing is not what it used to be. Sometimes it’s funny when I repeat back to the person who is speaking to me what I thought I heard.

In late December, just before my husband’s January third birthday, I heard my daughter say to me on the phone, “Mom, they have black beans with pesto.” I was cooking at the time and somewhat hungry, so, what she said made sense to me. I asked her, “Where do they have black beans with pesto, dear?”

When she stopped laughing, she said, “NO, MOM! They have BLACK JEANS at COSTCO... the kind Dad wants for his birthday!”

“Oh.”

So, when I was listening to the radio and heard a discussion of a local “SMELLING BEE”, I knew it was a SPELLING BEE but began a whole riff in my mind of what it would be like to have competitions to identify smells. The idea of a smell-off appeals to me in part because, even though my hearing is going, I still have a really good sniffer. 

It used to drive my college roommate crazy when I’d complain about the garlic wafting into our small bathroom through the medicine cabinet that was back to back with the medicine cabinet in the apartment next door. She couldn’t smell it. In fact, Judy suffered from anosmia and couldn’t tell the difference between lemon pledge and chocolate cake. I told her it was because her “ol’factories” were on strike.

When I taught nursery school, I assembled a “Sniff-kit” of film cans filled with different scents for the children to identify without looking. There were lemon peel, orange peel, chocolate, vanilla bean, mint leaves, cinnamon, garlic, onion, Eucalyptus oil and ground coffee among other substances.  Kids do pretty well on these “ID the Aroma” challenges. 

Why couldn’t we have local competitions to see who had the most discerning nose? A Smelling Bee might be perfect to boost inclusivity because it does not take physical prowess, hearing or sight.

There was a child who fell through the cracks at my children’s elementary school. Jono had an undiagnosed hearing loss. He wasn’t getting anywhere near the amount of instruction the other kids were. Years later, it was so gratifying to hear that he had found his niche as a taste chef at an exclusive restaurant outside Seattle. He has a rare talent: He can identify and make changes in the taste of food quite elegantly. The popularity of the restaurant is a testament to his gift.

The olfactory nerves are the only ones that take their message directly into the brain. All other senses have long circuitous routes to travel, while branches of the olfactory protrude directly out of the brain through the cribiform plate of the ethmoid bone directly behind the bridge of the nose and into the upper most parts of the nasal passages. Think of a flat plate with nerve fibers hanging down through the tiny holes. Smell is immediate.

Have you had a scent bring on a whole gestalt of remembered experience? Bread from the oven, perhaps, may trigger a childhood memory of being in your grandmother’s kitchen. The smell of new mown hay may bring back an entire summer spent on a farm.

Scent can have many primal and emotional connections. Our noses have the capacity to discern information way off the usual radar screen of sight or hearing. We can smell fear. I remember the early morning hours of January 17, 1994 when the Northridge Quake brought all four of our family members, one over-night guest and the two dogs together in the hall way and the wreak of adrenaline our dogs brought to the party. Whewh!

Evidently, men can smell when a woman is ovulating or on her menses, providing she has not masked all the biologically imperative pheromones with cologne. I wonder if we’re pissing in the gene pool (my husband's line) by ignoring (masking) important information about potential mates whose DNA may or may not be suitable to mix with our own DNA.

Chemistry is a funny thing. Is it love or is it Channel No. 5 or Axe Cologne? 

Just wondering.

The Nose Knows! We had a dog named "Marvin Gardens" who could find a rock UNDERWATER at the Little Sur River when we camped there one summer. We’d show him the rock, throw it and he’d put his head under the water for several seconds and come up with that very same rock! Now that’s some ethmoid bone/cribiform plate/olfactory precision, eh?