My sense of smell is very important to me. Since I have never lost my sense of smell, I could only imagine what it would be like. To live in a world where one could not smell any scents at all good or bad is hard to comprehend. I use my sense of smell everyday without realizing how valuable it is.

Smell is the strongest sense tied to memory. It is said that the average human can identify 10,000 different smells. This means without the sense of smell there would be 10,000 things that you could not recognize via memory.

For me, the smell of a freshly cooked turkey coming out of the oven triggers many memories of family Thanksgiving meals. Every Thanksgiving my family would have several relatives over for a big Thanksgiving meal. On those nights the smells did not stop at cooked turkey; there was stuffing, potatos, corn, dinner rolls, cranberry sauce, and of course my favorite, pumpkin pie. All of these smells are locked in my memory along with big family dinners where we talk all night and get ready for the holiday season.

My sense of smell is also very important to me because the sense of smell influences the sense of taste. Taste is only able to sense if something is sweet, bitter, sour, or salty. When one chews on a piece of gum one may taste if it is a sweet or sour type of gum, but without the sense of smell one would not be able to taste the refreshing mint, bubblegum, strawberry, or any other type of flavor. I could not imagine losing a sense such as this, thus making my sense of smell such an important one.