My nephew smells

Recently I had an opportunity to spend some quality time with my nephew. He is a normal, seemingly well adjusted smart kid (I can fix that), but he has a unique peculiarity – he smells. Now don’t get me wrong he does not openly exude Durian stink like me, on the contrary he seems to smell rather WELL actually. Yes, like some kind of teen wolf with twilight vibrato in his vibrissae, the kid literally howls at any noun that sticks a stiff scent up his septum.

For normal humans, a fresh out-of-the-oven loaf of bread, or maybe a steak dinner will call for some olfactory attention and lead us to the meatus. But this youngin’ will nose-over airplanes, cardboard, leather footballs, plastic bags – you name it. Whatever IT is, if it is in front of him with little wavy lines rising to the sky, he’ll not just give a dime of his time, but he’ll volunteer a snifty scent nasal nudge.

This is in direct conflict with my basic skunk rule of survival – smell only when you fear for your life or eat corned beef and cabbage. That means I avoid the mall perfumery , the food court and BOTH the rhino and the plasty with my oh so sensitive sinuses. Also under no circumstances can you fall for the spousal stink trap of “Smell this – does the milk seem bad to you too?” respiratory ruse.

I’ve heard of some of those ice cream flavor gurus being supertasters but I’ve never heard any good things about people who smell a lot. I could understand this ‘talent’ if my nephew was hatched on my side of the coop, since my genes and cells are laced and padded with defective scratch n’ sniff anomalies a-plenty. But this kid is from the wife’s familial vine-line so I thought that her DNA pool was highly chlorinated and not nearly as murky as my chromosome-light side of the short bus.

Regardless of his ‘smell-tale’ heart, it doesn’t take ‘Nostril-damus’ to predict that my nephew’s future will really STINK! Not because he’s destined to have trouble with adolescence, his parents or homework, but because he starts high school in the Fall. You remember that place don’t you . . . the cafeteria wreaks of bleach and tater tots, none of the boys shower after P.E., and the girls all douse themselves in competing and conflicting ‘Eau de toilette’!