Another Day at the Olefactory

This evening, as I was driving Ian home from Russian Math, he reported to me that he coud recognize Alyssa's smell with his eyes closed. Of course, I was curious as to who this Alyssa was; 'turns out she's a classmate. And when Ian says "smell," he doesn't mean anything negative; far from it. And he also doesn't mean some kind of perfume; we're talking about eight-year-old's, after all... No. Ian knows her smell, and can recognize it with no other stimulus. I don't think there's any remarkable "chemistry" going on; I think Ian is just something of a connoisseur of personal scents, and recognizes this talent.

In fact, he says that he could recognize any member of his class by their smell. Did I think this would be difficult? Of course I did. But I was wrong. Ian told me it's very easy for him.

But one has to draw the line somewhere. At bedtime, he told me that he can also recognize the smell of mucus (by which I presume he means the kind that abounds when a person has a head-cold). This is not so remarkable; when he told me about this gift, I said, "I know - isn't it disgusting?!" And of course I mean it; when someone has a very advanced cold... you know it.

But Ian is is a true intellectual. He said no; he finds the smell pleasant.

If I said this at eight - or forty-five, or four - it would be a matter of trying to bait and horrify the adult world. I knew, as a lad, what made people gag, and I was quite creative in spinning out phrases and images to produce just that effect on an unwitting grown-up populace. But I'm quite sure that Ian means what he says. He knows the aromas of his contemporaries. He knows smells in general. And he likes them.

I'm quite glad that someone with such a rare gift for perception has a parallel, and far rarer, gift of aesthetic appreciation. For myself, sometimes I'm happy for the gifts that I don't have...

(December 13, 2011)