Powerful odors and other stories...

One of the big things I’d heard about quitting smoking is that your sense of smell and taste improve dramatically.

Having not smoked for well over a week now, I was beginning to think this was a myth…until I got out of bed this morning.

You see, I assumed that if my sense of smell and taste was going to improve, it was going to improve gradually. Not so.

Have you ever been on a plane or something and your ears pop…then a few hours later you yawn…and your hearing returns to normal so suddenly that everything is unbearably and painfully loud? That happened to me, only with taste and smell instead of hearing.

Basically, it’s like I woke up this morning with an almost Superhuman sense of smell and taste.

Now this can be a good thing (For example, the Chicken Ciabata sandwich I had for lunch was awesome)…but when it started raining and I let Buddy in the house, the smell of wet dog was so powerful it almost made me throw up.

It’s like the world has become booby-trapped overnight and I have to be on constant guard for unexpected smells.

We went to Walmart today and a woman was wearing so much perfume I could smell her coming from thirty yards away. This is not an exaggeration. When she passed by me, I thought I was going to choke.

Hopefully this will ‘normalize’ a little over the next few days and I’ll get used to it. Otherwise I’ll have to make myself a costume and use my new-found superhuman senses to fight crime.

Now I just need a name… Olfactory Man? The Sniffler?