The test consisted of four booklets, each containing 20 scratch-and-sniff patches and four multiple choice answers per patch. Most everything I could smell at all (about 20 percent of the patches) smelled the same to me, faintly sweet.
The instructions were to guess if you weren’t sure, that the test is not statistically valid unless an answer is given for each of the 80 patches.
The most interesting part of the test for me was the groupings of possible answers. Since we pretty much take our sense of smell for granted, we don’t often stop to think about how many distinct smells there are in the world, especially when, like me, you can no longer detect most of them.
Above a given patch, for example, might be the following choices: A) gasoline B) leather C) bubble gum D) chocolate. Another might be: A) tobacco B) peanut butter C) motor oil D) lemon. Yet another: A) vinegar B) sweaty socks C) lavender D) apples.
I don’t remember the exact groupings, but all the smells I just named were on the test in various combinations. Often the same smells were given as possible answers on several different patches. Gasoline, I remember, came up a lot. I didn’t smell anything that smelled like gasoline. If I had smelled gasoline and struck a match against the patch, I wonder what would have happened.
One of life’s great imponderables.
Test Results: I’ve lost much of my sense of smell. Duh. The doctor who scored the standardized test said he wasn’t able to determine what kinds of smells I can still smell accurately, if any, only that the scoring showed I have some small sense of smell remaining. Smells fishy to me.
Location: Roselle Park.
JERSEYNESS: The test came with a pencil with that has the name of the company that makes the test printed on it. The doctor said I could keep it. What a guy. I later looked at it and discovered that the maker is a Jersey firm: Sensonics of Haddon Heights, And the test is officially called The Smell Identification Test.