Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Wonder Nose

Recently I discovered that I possess a superhuman sense of smell. It’s either that or a brain aneurysm that generates phantom odors and eventually kills the host. For our purposes today, I’m going with option Wonder Nose.

Unfortunately, this super power doesn’t help me save the world as much as it makes living with 8 other human beings more difficult, especially when the signature smell of boys 9-years and older seems to be wet dog and Fritos. In fact, my 12-year old’s room smells like either his dirty clothes hamper is filled with bushels of rotting broccoli or there’s a body decomposing in there. And frankly, I’m too afraid to check which it might actually be.

Okay, so it doesn’t take a superpower to smell growing boys, but last weekend, while staying in a Salt Lake City hotel, I could hardly sleep because our bed smelled like malt vinegar. And maybe it wasn’t so much the smell as it was the image of someone sitting in our bed, eating a supersized order of fish and chips drenched in malt vinegar—perhaps directly from the mattress—while watching a marathon of Long Island Medium.

Mr.Charming, at first, couldn’t smell it. And he may have only conceded that there was in fact a smell simply because he thought he might actually get some sleep if he agreed with me.

Later that same night I dreamed a shadowy creature was watching us from the corner of the room while smoking, only to awaken to what was definitely the smell of cigarette smoke wafting through our room. My husband couldn’t smell that either. So if my theory of possessing a super schnoz is right, I was probably detecting someone smoking on the street corner just outside our hotel.

After we returned to Idaho Falls, I made my husband stand in the entryway of our house to see if he could detect the smell of mold that had been haunting me for weeks. It’s a smell that eludes everyone else, including my husband. If we all die of Black Death, you’ll know why. Although it could just be one of the kazillion shoes our kids kick off right by the front door. And not that I’m above sticking my nose inside each and every one to discover which is the offending pair, I totally am.

Sometimes when I catch a whiff of something foul I sniff down my kids like a drug dog, which makes me think I should take whatever course those dogs do so I can know what drugs actually smell like, just in case.

The other night my husband and I were talking about our superpowers, because he possesses this freakish ability to remove price tags without leaving any residue. We talked about joining the Avengers and holding the fort down while all the real superheroes went out to save world. I enjoyed the image of the two of us in our spandex costumes, watching a movie and eating popcorn in the Shield theater.

And then Mr. Charming said, “But if a villain tries to take over the world with smelly labels, we’d totally have it covered.”


Rest well, America. Rest well.