One thing about me that people are very surprised about when they learn about it is that I don't really have a sense of smell. It comes and goes. I've been diagnosed with inflamed turbinate. I'm not so sure about that. I saw on Embarrassing bodies (if you haven't seen the show, google it, I'm totally hooked) that Dr Pixie had the same problem I do and she has nose polyps, which to me makes much more sense than the turbinate. Oh yeah, I'm at that point, self - diagnosing.
Anyways, living in Barcelona and teaching has meant that I got to know the city the hard way: traveling on public transport non-stop till the end of the universe. I'm ok with it, really. Another thing people are surprised about (especially if they are Venezuelans) is the fact that I can't drive. So that leaves public transport, which in Barcelona is pretty decent I must say, it works well and it's usually well conected, especially if you master the buses, which I have by now.
At this point in my life, I honestly like not having a sense of smell, but what tends to happen is that it comes and goes in bad moments, for example: I'm very excited about a free seat on the metro or on the bus (when the bus is packed - that should tell me something) and then I sit down and my almost non-excisting sense of smell comes. Why does it do that? It cannot come when I'm enjoying a pizza or having a nice cup of coffee, it has to come when the guy next to me has unbearable B.O or when I'm passing by a sewage - NICE. I had a girl next to me not long ago that smelled like onions and garlic (which I can recognise because I hate onions and garlic is very intense), of course the smell came to me after I was already sitting there for like 5 minutes, to late to leave, and I must say I'm the worst actor when it comes to hidding my distaste for a smell.
It's also embarrasing that I never know what a smell is, I can't recognise almost any odour because I don't have any memory of it. I know citric, coffee, I have learned recently how sewage smells (thank you Barcelona, for giving me that - not), onions, garlic, and I can't think of much more, maybe some flowers and maybe a perfume, that I honestly couldn't recognise by name if I smelled it on the street. I can only say "it smells good/ bad", that's about it. Mostly, I can never smell anything, which is also embarrassing when you date. Your date gets all nice and dressed up, puts on some cologne, and expects a compliment, and from me they get nothing, only a "you look nice". This fact has made some men freak out a little, including my boyfriend. He came to visit me in Birmingham from Barcelona when we started dating and had some cologne on, which of course I never smelled (to this day), after 2 days I casually told him "I can't really smell much, usually nothing" and he started laughing - "that's why you never commented on my cologne!"
So that's the story of my nose, that has gotten me in very embarrassing moments. It can be good and bad, I get seats all the time in the metro and I tend to be ok, my sense of smell comes back very seldomly. That bad part is when everyone says something smells nice and of course your nose doesn't work that day, and you miss it. Not having an odour memory tells me it's ok not to have a sense of smell, I don't have the good but I don't have the bad! - for me that's worth it (especially on the metro)!
