How To Tell Other People Are Not Mrissas

[mrissa]

I was reading along in Lyda Morehouse's Apocalypse Array, and I got to this: "When I kissed Mouse ever so lightly on the cheek, I smelled him for the first time -- a clean, spicy scent, like rosemary, mingled with the leather of his jacket." Let's leave aside whether rosemary is spicy; I read that and thought, "That's impossible. She's been having a conversation with him for at least ten minutes straight. She has to have been smelling him." And then I thought, "Oh. That whole 'other people not being me' thing." Sigh. I mean, that is what it is, right? I'm not being given the information that this character has what the author would consider a disability?

Comments

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Maybe the character is congested that day? I smell people well before I'm within kissing range. Smelling is an important prerequisite to most kissing activities.

Although describing rosemary as clean and spicy does make me wonder about disabilities.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Smelling is an important prerequisite to most kissing activities.

I'd say "all," for me.

[jenett]

Not everyone is a Mrissa.

I don't actually notice specific smells a lot unless it's really strong, or I'm fairly close to the source - I can certainly see having been standing around talking at conversational distance, and not picking up a specific scent or noticing I picked up on it, and then getting closer and having it hit me.

(The thing that's odd about this is that there are times my body notices something - reactions to some kinds of perfume, smoke residue, etc, but I don't notice it as a smell unless I'm close. I notice it as a lung reation.)

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

That's right. Most people don't have a good sense of smell, and most of them don't recognize it as a disability.

My sense of smell has been good all my life, which I didn't realize until recently when it began to go awry. Now I'm smelling things that aren't there, or smelling things wrong; my co-worker walks by me with coffee and I smell airport hotdogs. I find it terribly disorienting.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

I have some signals crossed, too. That coffee odor that clings to the serious coffee drinkers seems like cigarettes to me--right up until I smell someone who actually REEKS of cigarettes. But until I get the actual contrast, I'm like, "Hm, cigarettes."

And I KNOW that's wrong.

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

My co-worker suggests that perhaps the confusion took place earlier -- that I've been seeing the Nathan's sign and the hotdogs, smelling overstewed coffee, and associating the two. That would also explain why in my brain "hotdogs" is a good smell and "airport hotdogs" is a nasty smell.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Hot dogs and coffee often take some sorting-out for me if I don't see the item in question, because either one makes me think "potluck" before an actual food or beverage. But it's not all hot dogs and not all coffee, so I think it could have something to with roasting.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Some badly roasted coffee and cigarettes do have smell notes in common.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

I generally have a wretched sense of smell compared to other people (to the point where I have answered "what?" to "do you smell that?" enough to believe that mine is probably far worse than the norm). I definitely can't smell clean, healthy, un-chemically-scented people until I am within kissing range.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Remind me not to try to sneak cloves into your house. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, I haven't smelled you often enough that I'd be sure that you didn't just sometimes smell of cloves. It's rude to mention, mostly: "Hey, dude, you smell like a ham or baked apples or maybe gingerbread!"

PS

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Usually when I say "I haven't seen you often," what I really mean is "I haven't smelled you often."

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

That's just inaccurate writing. What she means is that the character noticed his smell for the first time. Where, O where, is the literary rigor of yesteryear?

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

If she were me, she might not even smell him when she kissed him.

[greatestofnates.livejournal.com]

Are you saying you normally notice the smell of people that you talk to? Next time I am taking a shower before I visit.

I don't notice most people's smell unless I'm standing close. I think my sense of smell is burnt out. And living in a metro area there isn't a lof stuff around I like to smell anyway.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, I do normally notice the smell of people I talk to. It's a major part of how I navigate the world.

I'm not as averse to normal/healthy/clean human body smells as some people, though, so living in a metro area doesn't drive me entirely crazy.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Normally I smell people as distinctive at about 2 feet away. Further if they have a particularly strong smell about them, nearer if there is a particularly strong environmental smell.

There's a possible linguistic loophole for Morehouse--for vision, English distinguishes between "see" and "look at," but for olfactory it's "smell" for both passive and active. (Unless you want to say "sniff" or something). I wouldn't normally parse what you quoted that way, but I like to be charitable.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm not at all sure that's charitable.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that the character had not consciously noticed the smell before. I can usually get a sense of people's scents within a few feet, but I've only started doing this over the last couple of years. I suppose I've always been able to, but I never paid attention before. Since the vision is failing I've begun to use the other senses, so that people's physical representation gets sort in my mind not just on visual clues, but also olfactory, audio, and even tactile clues. It is simply a matter of being aware.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I'm with pollyc--I usually don't smell people until I'm close enough to touch them with my nose.

I'm nearsighted, too. *g*

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Ditto and ditto. The only times I smell people when I'm further away than a few inches is if they've doused themselves with perfume, have really strong and stinky body odor, or haven't bathed recently.

And even if I am within kissing distance, if the person is clean and hasn't been sweating heavily, I couldn't identify what they smell like other than to say that I like the way they smell or I don't, and even then it's pretty subliminal.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Unless he's wearing enough Rosemary Aftershave to kill a horse, I'd probably not notice something like that (conciously) until I was that close to him--I'm assuming from the context that it's something like how his skin/hair smells, not something he's wearing.

While I've got a very good sense of smell (which I'm pretty sure ties into my extreme pickiness with food), I'm also fairly good at ignoring it if I don't need to pay attention to what things smell like at the time. Ie, I'll notice the boy smells of tea tree oil and toothpaste and himself when I hug him goodnight, but I don't notice the way he smells otherwise unless I have a reason to. (He comments on how I smell, but that's usually when I'm wearing perfume or fancy shampoo.)

And I think I might allow 'spicy' for a description of rosemary in the 'like the spice cabinet' sense, not in the description of what rosemary smells like (pine trees! But mostly like itself.)

[pameladean]

Not only is everybody not a Mrissa, everybody is not anybody else, either. I know people with, for all practical purposes, no conscious sense of smell at all. Things also vary a lot in the other direction -- that is, for my sense of smell, some people don't smell like anything unless I'm extremely close to them, while others fill a car or a house with their distinctive odor, which can be pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. So really any olfactory interaction between two people can land anywhere on a huge range of possibilities -- you have to take into account not only the sensitivity of the smelling apparatus, but the power of the broadcasting apparatus on the other side.

Also, I think rosemary smells spicy.

P.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I can recognize some people's smells a few minutes after they've left a room (not always in an unpleasant way, either), and others seem to have no odor at all.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I can smell who has been in my house on a given day, generally, and in which rooms.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

I'm joining the 'rosemary is notspicy' camp. It's a permeating scent. I'd never describe it as subtle, though I would describe it as delicious.

I'd also smell it from several feet away. Especially if I was moving towards even a chaste cheek kiss -- it's still a degree of intimacy and familiary well beyond my 'don't smell strangers' threshold ('cause usually, I don't wanna know what people smell like, so I don't 'try' to smell them). People I'm even conversationally interested in, I pay attention to. So I'd see their body language, I'd hear their inflections and I'd smell whatever they smelled like. I wouldn't get their skin smell from conversation distance, 'cause my sense of smell isn't that sharp, but I'd certainly smell leather and rosemary.

The main thing to me is where the character was going with Mr. Rosemary Leathers. Was she attracted? Repulsed? Liked? The excerpt alone foreshadows further intimacy and suggests that the character is -- at the least -- interested in the guy. I find it difficult to believe anyone would miss the smell of leather from conversation distance, unless they were outright nose-deaf.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That's very much where the excerpt was going, but yah, I'm with you on the smell of leather and conversation distance. Even old, well-worn leather smells like leather.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I had a similar reaction to a fantasy novel in which the protagonist has been switched to a different body -- and doesn't realize it till he looks in a mirror.

To me, the body would _feel_ different from at least the moment of waking up.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Was that a de Lint? Because I had that reaction to a de Lint awhile back.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Yep. To be precise, Trader. And I looked at the ending, and he still has to see himself in the mirror (or at least look at his body) to remember he's "moved".

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I remember thinking that was dumb.

But then, I've awakened in a different body several times in my life, and I noticed every time. I grew extremely quickly when I was 10, so I'm talking about that and not magical body transferrence.

[(Anonymous)]

I was at the Science Museum and looking through their about the body exhibit and I saw the startling fact that 2% of people have no sense of smell, which got me thinking that maybe smell is like other senses in which there is a range of capability. To me it always seems strange when an author talks about waking up with the world blurry, but I know that there are people who don't have great vision, so I can see where it makes sense.

Heathah

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, I know there's a range of capability, but that just seemed like it was way off the bottom end of what I consider "unhandicapped."

[(Anonymous)]

This may be true, but unfortunately there isn't much in the way of smell aids out there. If you have bad vision, you get glasses; bad hearing, you get a hearing aid; bad sense of smell or taste, no help whatsoever. Even bad sense of touch therapists will work with you on, but it seems like with smell and taste you're just SOL.

Heathah

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

This is true, and extremely sad.