When I was six, I embarrassed a boy in class by putting my hand up and telling the teacher he’d wet himself. He sat two rows behind me but I’d smelled it, intensely.
He was so upset that my grandmother was called into school. When we got home, she warned: “Never use your sense of smell for that again.” She explained that I, like her, had hereditary hyperosmia – a heightened genetic predisposition to detecting odours, meaning I’m a super-smeller.
