God gave me a beauty of a nose.
Now when I say beauty, I don't mean that anyone would look at it and say, "Wow, that's one stunning schnozzola." It's too big for my face and a lot of women would've had it nipped and tucked if it was theirs. I often hear that I resemble Meryl Streep and let's face it, she has quite a long, yet charming, nose. If I step out into the sun for more than a couple of minutes, it's a sure bet that I'll come back in with a nose redder than Rudolph's because nothing else sticks out far enough to shade this proboscis.
No, the beauty of my nose is that it's more than just a kickstand for my glasses--it has power! I smell things long before anyone else in the room does and I smell things too faint for anyone else to smell. Sometimes that's a curse, as you can imagine--being on an elevator when a woman drenched in perfume steps in, being around my dogs on a rainy day, and being around anyone who has eaten anything with garlic or onion--all times I wish I could turn down my nose's power.
Once, my daughter and I were trapped in a compact car with my female dog who was having a bit of tummy trouble. Even before Bella would look up at me with that guilty look dogs get when they let one fly, I was already gagging. It was so bad, I was ready to run red lights, confident that any police officer who pulled me over would sympathize. It made for quite a trip--my daughter and I alternating between holding our noses, yelling at drivers who slowed our progress, and uncontrollably laughing every time Bella gave us the "Oops, I did it again" look. Talk about finding humor in the "stinky bits" of life!
So having a heightened sense of smell can be a definite curse. But a lot of the time, it's a blessing.
I am the official sniffer in our household. If there is a suspicious odor and we don't know where it's coming from, I am the bloodhound hot on it's trail. I have sniffed my way around carpets, into cupboards and even up chimneys.
Not sure if an item from the refrigerator has gone bad? Bring it on. I can tell you the freshness no matter if it swam, clucked, mooed, or oinked.
I was the first one to smell smoke when the floorboards of our truck caught on fire as we drove down the turnpike. Luckily, we were able to pull over before the actual flames burst through. I'd done a lot of fake fire drills with my friends when we first got our licenses--you know, the kind where you all pile out of the car at a red light and run around it for no apparent reason until the light changes to green and then you jump back in and drive away. This was the first time the car fire drill was for real and I had little kids buckled into those car seats that are almost impossible for adults to unbuckle, but somehow easy for toddlers to climb out of while you're driving. It made for a few moments of panic, but thanks to my nasal early warning system, we were all safe.
Another time, I kept telling my family there was an unpleasant odor coming from something near the fireplace in our family room. Everybody made suggestions, but nobody took my complaints seriously enough to investigate. If they had, maybe we could have used a shovel instead of a Shop Vac to get the dead raccoon out of the chimney. Seriously. We had to pay a guy to Shop Vac it out of the chimney. It was beyond disgusting. Is there some sort of trade school where you take a course in how to Shop Vac dead animals out of chimneys? Some manual with a chapter on "Choosing the appropriate tools based on level of wildlife decomposition"?
Having a strong sense of smell has come in handy quite a few times over the years and it saved us again this past week. I had been out of town for a few days and when I returned home, my husband Herbie was sweet enough to help me unpack the food that I had brought back. A little while later, I smelled burning. The main oven was off, but my daughter was cooking a ham steak in the little convection oven on the counter. She checked it and it was fine, but I still smelled smoke. We took the ham out and checked inside the oven, but the smell wasn't as strong for me there. I continued to sniff around the kitchen and then they started to smell it, too.
I might have caught the scent first, but my daughter spotted the problem first--my husband had unpacked some bakery items onto one of the counters in a big pile and smoke was curling up from the area. It seems one of the loaves of bread had been placed in exactly the right position to push down the handle of the toaster and hold it down while other items had fallen on top of the toaster and well, you can imagine. The top and sides of the toaster are now coated in melted plastic, but that's nothing compared to the globs that dripped inside.
If God hadn't given me my beauty of a nose, we might have left the area without knowing there was a problem and who knows how much it could have spread by the time we walked back into the kitchen. The smoke alarm didn't go off. My husband installed it and I guess he has it programmed to only go off if I've left his favorite chocolatey chip cookies in the oven ten seconds too long, but not if he's turning the toaster into an objet d'art.
Next time, I'll tell you how a patch of dry skin on my elbow saved us from a tornado.
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