I have been without any sense of smell since I was born.
I am now in my seventies and until now I have never met anybody with the same condition. People think I am very odd or simply don't believe me.
Surely, I can't be the only one. Does anyone out there have the same problem? How has it affected you?
Obviously, it has caused me some problems and I risked going up in smoke on one occasion: in the mid nineteen sixties, I was au pair in France in a small house, looking after a ten-year-old boy. I cooked his lunch for him every day but once I was so wrapped up in the book I was reading that I forgot the time. The little boy came in from school, covered his mouth with his scarf and shouted Gas! Gas!
I had been sitting in a gas-filled kitchen (a gas tap had been inadvertently turned on) and if I had got up to cook the lunch the Whole house could have exploded
It's no big deal on the whole - not like it must be for those who are impaired of any of the other senses. However, it seems strange that the lack of a sense of smell should be so rare.
