Smell expert
I never knew Charlie R when I was in elementary school. We sometimes played together in the neighborhood playground where I lived just outside of Columbus Ohio. When I was 12 we moved away and that is the last time I saw Charlie. Many years later I read a human-interest story about Charlie in our local newspaper. I was amazed but maybe not really.
Charlie participated in our games like punch ball, or, can you top this on some of the equipment in our playground. He was one of us but not really. He would always be sniffing around, making faces, or sighing, or with a look of disgust when he smelled something that the rest of us ignored, like an old truck tire near the monkey bars. Charlie would start to climb up the monkey bars and then stop and come back down and sniff the truck tire. He would circle it stop, sniff some more and then move further around the tire.
Us kids knew that Charlie was clearly different from the rest of us but so what. We accepted him despite being different. We were all different in some way. I remember one kid would always have a funny body odor and we would have Charlie go over to him and sniff all around him. We would ask Charlie, “What is that smell?” Charlie even then was an expert sniffer and would smile and say, “”that the kid didn’t really have the body odor of someone who didn’t bathe but instead it was the residual odor left by a special laundry detergent used to clean cloths of someone allergic to the traditional detergent. All I could say when I heard that is “Wow!”
Out of the blue, or maybe some other color, I read in the paper a story poem that Charlie wrote about himself. I thought the Wow still was a bullseye when it comes to recognizing a super nose. Charlie’s nose gift is special but absurd and another reminder how we are all different and sometimes in unusual ways. Maybe there are people out there who are allergic to be around short people. There may be many more people who have scrap books of the unusual people they have met. Maybe there is someone out there who can whistle Brahms double concerto imitating every instrument in the orchestra. That would be a treat if you were around such a person when he was whistling.
I am an expert
As written by me, Charlie R., now all grown up
My nose is special
I was just past being a toddler
Knew I was different
My nose knew what others didn’t
Couldn’t
Notice
My mother told my pediatrician
‘My son is different, really’
And my doc told other docs all about me
What an amazing nose I had
I didn’t mind the hours of smell practice
The scent sticks stuck under my nose
“Well Charlie, what is this smell?”
I was almost always right even when I wasn’t
My parents hired a smell master
The sniff guru trained me to smell in little gasps
Mouth closed then open
Tested me with mysterious scents
Wild mushrooms
Fresh latex paint
Wet watercolor paper
Waterman’s ink
When I was twenty
I was ready
Put to work
First to help doctors make diagnoses
Sniffing patient wastes
Then I helped Channel develop new perfumes
Finally, the crown in my career
Replacing a dying lab retriever in airport security
Sniffing bags for explosives and drugs
I walked about
Collar around my neck
My master holding my leach
Both of us proud of what we have accomplished
Together but it was my expertise that made us stand out
No one is like me
I am special and always will be.