Having congenital anosmia is strange. Not only can I not smell, but I have no clue what could have happened to cause the problem. And the vague answers of “birth defect” or “genetics” just aren’t as fun as lying and saying “My mother dropped me on the head when I was a baby.” The answer “I was born without it” baffles many; however, I’m not even 100 percent sure I was really born without it.

Any congenital anosmic will tell you the same thing: I never remember being able to smell. ‘Remember’ being the key word here. Congenitals are always given a small possibility, a tiny chance, that at one point they could smell—before their first substantial memories, that is.

If that is the case with me and at one point I could in fact smell, I think I can speculate about how I might have lost the ability…

[wavy harp sound effects here]

It was one of those beautiful summer days and I was tagging along with my brother, begging to play with him and his friends. And this day, he actually let me! The game was baseball and I was made the catcher. My brother was batter. When the first pitch was thrown, my brother swung and missed. Another pitch was thrown…swing and a miss. And this apparently was the end of my attention span because my eyes stopped looking at the pitcher and starting following a little butterfly up up and up into the trees. La La La…Swing and a hit…me…crack in the back of the head.

Did I mention this was an aluminum bat that hit me?

And so I started running towards the house, just wailing as loud as I could, my brother running after chanting “Omigod omigod omigod please don’t tell mom please don’t tell mom please don’t tell mom!” And because I was five years his junior and wanted to play with him and his friends again I stopped, turned around, sniffed, and said “That didn’t hurt.”

But oh, it did.

I don’t remember much of my childhood before that…at least, not that clearly. So if could smell before then…I don’t really know.