I sure can smell Vomit.

Ok - make that 'only when someone has puked atleast ten time, in a car with the windows closed'. 'Cos I found that out under those specific conditions.

If you know me in person, in real life and not just BlogLand, chances are you might know that I am unspecific odor-blind.

That's a real scientific word and I swear I did not make that up.

Smell is a very direct sense. In order for you to smell something, molecules from that thing have to make it to your nose. Everything you smell, therefore, is giving off molecules -- whether it is bread in the bakery, onions, perfume, a piece of fruit or whatever. At the top of your nasal passages behind your nose, there is a patch of special neurons about the size of a postage stamp. These neurons are unique in that they are out in the open where they can come into contact with the air. They have hair-like projections called cilia that increase their surface area. An odor molecule binds to these cilia to trigger the neuron and cause you to perceive a smell.
According to the book Molecular Biology of the Cell:

Humans can distinguish more than 10,000 different smells (odorants), which are detected by specialized olfactory receptor neurons lining the nose.... It is thought that there are hundreds of different olfactory receptors, each encoded by a different gene and each recognizing different odorants. Each of the hundreds of receptors are encoded by a specific gene. If your DNA is missing a gene or if the gene is damaged, it can cause you to be unable to detect a certain smell. For example, some people have no sense for the smell of camphor. 

 Such people can smell many other things, but specifically can not smell something. They are hence odor-blind for that specific odor.

But unspecific odor-blinds like me, can not smell many. There are only a few strong - and by that I mean really strong - smells that I can sense. Like ammonia. Like rotting fish. Like ten rotting rats (can't smell one. Sorry!)

People often do not believe me when I say this. I can not smell esters and hence I can not smell fruits or flowers or even artificial fragrances - colognes etc. And thus I always had to take someone's help or work around the rules in the chemistry lab. It is thanks to my lab assistant that I managed to pass high school organic and physical chemistry.

If you are still surprised let me tell you this - I can not smell flowers, fruits, boiling milk, something on fire, something rotting (unless it is in big numbers), drainage, dirty diapers, dirty toilets, dirty people, sweat, or the good stuff like cooking. Sometimes I can smell something, but I can not distinguish what the smell is.

I am no scientist, but the most reasonable causes of my being odor-blind might be that

1. It runs in the family, although in varying degrees. Most severe in me, less severe in my sibs and moderately my Dad. However, my eldest sister is nothing short of a smelling machine - she can smell milk boiling from two streets across!

2. Maybe..maybe I damaged the neurons in my nose as a kid. Well... I don't remember being punched in the face.. but hey who knows! 

I often wonder if this is a bane in disguise or a simple curse. I want to smell the flowers - the lillies, the roses, the jasmines and the lavenders. I want to remember them and associate memories with them. But I can not.

I feel lucky though when I escape the smell of garbage or sweat or other stinky stuff that people encounter in daily life.

Its kind of weird though when someone I do not know smells something and innocently asks me 'Do you smell that?' If I like the person I might tell him the truth. If I don't I just sniff my nose and say 'Maybe. What is it?'

And when I tell the truth, they have the same unbelievable look on their face that you do right now :)

Hey! You can still send me flowers, I can imagine how they smell.

The next time you smell something divine, do not think of me. I am in my own odorless heaven ;)

cartoon from here