When You Said To Me, You Are Not So Old, Did I Know It Then? 'Cause I Had Just Been Told, I Didn't Think I'd Find You, Perfect In So Many Ways

--"I've Been Waiting", Matthew Sweet

"So you're telling me that all sweat doesn't smell the same?" I asked Breanne one evening a few weeks after we were introduced to one another.

For all my life I've found questions regarding the sense of smell fascinating. What smells and what doesn't, when something smells particularly strong and when things don't smell at all, &c...--all these questions seem to creep in my daily conversations with people. Breanne, bless her little heart, has always been one of the most patient people when it comes to my asking some of the most inane questions concerning this one sense I've never possessed.

"No, silly. It's all a matter of odor., you know? If I go jogging right after I take a shower, it's not going to smell rank right away. But woe betide anyone if I've just been lazier than a cat on cold Sunday. If I haven't bathed after a day or two and I go running... hell's bells, let's just say you could smell all the way where you are."

"Oh, really? I didn't know that. I always assumed people stank when they exercised no matter what."

The way she laughed at me, you would have never known that I was any bit older than her. Indeed, the way I was peppering with questions about smelling and such, I sounded like a little tyke asking her older sister why the sky is blue. When you've lived all your life not knowing square one about a particular subject and you find somebody willing to humor your inquiries about that subject, you tend to start to take advantage of the situation. I don't know if I merely felt awkward about asking anyone else. I remember asking a few friends and family members a few questions about what it's like to sniff something. Their answers, unlike Little Miss Chipper's, always reflected their incredulity that I could be so ignorant. I mean--I know they didn't mean it. I could also understand how idiotic my questions must have sounded to them, especially since they've had those kinds of answers from when they were little kids. But for me it was like a blind man asking a man with sight to describe it for him. I didn't know how to else the questions I wanted answered without coming across as lacking in common sense. Remarkably, some of my questions in this area have been so simple that my disability has been called into question.

Assuredly, as I live and breathe, I possess no sense of smell. Breanne's one of the few that never questioned that statement. She took it on faith that I was telling her the truth from day one.

"Anything else you'd like to know, sugar? Anything at all?"

"So if something isn't producing any kind of residue or steam, does it smell?"

"Yeah, of course it does. You don't see any cloud of gas coming off flowers, you know?"

"Yeah."

"And you accept the fact those smell, right?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Something doesn't have to show a physical sign it's giving off an odor. Not at all."

She never made me feel stupid. She never made me feel like she was pitying me or that I was missing out on anything. She took the knowledge I provided her and she worked with it. Other people always called attention to the fact. They always brought it up in conversation as some oddity to be gawked at and gossiped about. She made me feel comfortable with it because with her it was never a huge deal. She took the information as if I told her my eyes were brown or that I was six feet tall. It was a characteristic of me, but nothing to be especially singled out or keyed on. There we were, in that usually hesitant stage of getting to know each other, where people try to put their best face forward. If I had any misgivings that she would look at me different or treat me different, conversations like that allayed those fears.

Anything I thought might be an obstacle to the beginnings of our friends--whether it was our age difference, the distance between us, some key philosophical and religious conflicts, or even the fact that she's a godforsaken Braves fan (a National League for chrissakes!)--they all seemed to fall away when met with the quality of her spirit. If in those first few weeks I thought she was a nice person to get to know, she was determined we'd be lifelong friends. It's no secret that she's always been more gung-ho when it came to maintaining our ties. When I've treated her badly, when I've thought there was no way she would ever take me back after the latest stunt I pulled or words I said, even when I unintentionally tried to pull away; she's always been right there to stand up for me and for us. There were a lot of times when I thought her stubbornness was a vice of hers. In the respect of hanging onto me, though, I've always thought it was one of her best features. One can never say that Miss Breanne Haley Holins ever gives up.

"See? I always thought you could see the smell. Like food, you can see the smoke coming off of it. Or coffee, for that matter. I always thought there was something there that would give you a visual sign it's giving off a smell."

"Not at all true. When you see me, you won't see me shooting off smoke like some firecracker, would you?"

"Probably not."

"Not, please, thank you. Yet I've been told I smell like heaven in a gift box, if you must know," she laughed.

"I don't doubt that at all, Miss Breanne."

See, I never thought she was perfect because she was cute. I never thought she was perfect because she was intelligent for her age or because she was graceful or opinionated. All of that factored in to compiling my picture of who she was as a person. Yes, the fact she had all these qualities was kind of nice. But the quality that put her over the edge in the "like you like crazy" department was the fact she's insatiably understanding. She can cut me off, she can yell her lungs out, she can disappear at times when things get overwhelming for her, but she'll bend over backwards to make feel appreciated and, I suppose, normal.

That's always been one of my biggest qualms. I always thought I was too out of the ordinary to ever have that one close friend who knows me all too well. Just think about it. I can't smell. I have issues with saying good-bye and hello to most people. I have all these idiosyncrasies with doing things in a certain way. I'm an insomniac. I lack for a lot of common sense. I have a temper, I've been violent before, and I tend to discard people like so much garbage. I never thought somebody could look past all that and still like what was underneath.

She's one of the few who has that rare ability.

She knows I have certain qualities that she understands and can work with, even if she can't always see them or physically touch them.

"Don't you know, Eeyore? Just because you can't see something doesn't mean it hasn't always been there. If you were me, you'd be able to tell something is there even though you don't know where it's coming from. That's what smelling's like, darling. You can't really say what the experience is in words... but you know what something or somebody smells good or bad before you can see them."

"Sounds like a good ability to have."

"Oh, it's nifty."

That's what makes her perfect in my eyes (if not to my nose). She sniffed out what she liked in me from three thousand miles away.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers