Like a lot of anosmics, I wasn’t always aware of the fact that I was born without a sense of smell. As children we are often asked to interact with our sensory world as part of a learning process. In kindergarten we learn our alphabet by hearing our ABCs sung, learn our colors by seeing them painted, and learn what “pain” is from a gym class game of dodge ball. And if a child cannot participate in these activities due to a disability, everyone is readily aware (I mean, what sick person would whip a ball at some poor kid in a wheel chair?). Most disabilities pertaining to the senses has an easily observable side effect or clue, an alert if you will, that something is wrong. Not smell.

The first clue I remember having about not being able to smell were those scratch ‘n sniff stickers. My friends would often comment about how a particular sticker smelled, but of course I wouldn’t be able to detect anything. One day, my mother received a special scratch ‘n sniff sticker in the mail from the gas company that smelled like gas. She called me over and said, “Heather, smell this. This is what gas smells like and if you ever smell anything like it, tell someone immediately. It can be very dangerous.”

That moment was the first time I ever vocalized not being able to smell. I told my mother I couldn’t smell anything. So, she scratched the sticker again and told me to smell. I again told her I couldn’t smell anything. At that point, she actually became angry with me, like I was pretending to not be able to smell just to annoy her.

After several rounds trying to convince her I couldn’t smell, she settled on “Oh great, you’re probably getting a cold. That means your brother’s going to get a cold and then I’m going to get a cold…” and so on and so on.

As time went by and the issue of smell came up more and more (children complaining about the smell of farts in a classroom, etc.), I began to figure out that something was wrong with me.

One day, I came home from school and decided to tell my mother point blank that I just couldn’t smell anything—that I never could. And she responded as usual, “Oh, you just have a cold.”

“No, I don’t have a cold and I don’t think I’ve ever been able to smell anything,” I replied. This started a long line of ridiculous statements/questions:

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Have you tried?”

“Yes.”

“Are you tired?”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Well, maybe you just forgot how.”

“I’ve never smelled anything.”

“Maybe you’re just not trying hard enough.”

“Arg!”

Several years went by of me trying to tell my parents that I couldn’t smell. In fact, it wasn’t until junior high school when I almost burnt the house down while making toast that my mother began to believe me. That’s right! It took a whole lot of smoke and a sluggish smoke detector to convince my parents that I couldn’t smell.

It was only then that they started to believe there was a problem. I was twelve.