One Autistic's Sensitivity to Smell: Recollections From Childhood

The Shirt, age 10, One Autistic's Sensitivity: Cranked Up Senses

It’s amazing I touched anything. It’s astounding I ate anything. There were more things I couldn’t touch than things I could and a longer list of food items I could not eat than that which I would.Don’t even get me started on sounds!

I kept my Princess mask on my pile of bedroom stuff. Princesses, I knew, could sleep on thirty mattresses and detect the discomfort of a small pea beneath the bottom-most mattress. I did not think of my self as royalty, but I was like that story. If, (God forbid!) I stepped on a cigarette butt or bottle cap I could feel it through the sole of my shoes. Keep stepping on bumpy things and I figured it could lead to me having a heart attack.

I couldn't step on the torn places on the living room floor where the grey swirls in the linoleum ended and turned to black. Gosh no! That was the bad territory and I’d probably get a disease and have to squeeze my fingers a hundred times then run outside till my breath came in hitches to erase the black from my feet and that wasn’t even a surefire cure.

I couldn't sit in the chairs at Starr's house. The embossed swirlies in her chairs were called “vinyl” and were even more intolerable than my own chairs. They made my blood stop flowing. They didn’t have that effect on anyone except me. I was the only one the chairs disliked.

Styrofoam coolers were a top secret operation. I wasn’t sure who was behind that; but it had to do with the spies who invented the sounds in dog whistles. Well, only I was sensitive to Styrofoam coolers. Couldn’t touch ‘em or hear someone touch ‘em. I didn’t know who was behind that plot against me…I was in the process of reading the book Harriet the Spy and I was keeping an eye on everybody.

What Does The Smoking Thing Have To Do With This Shirt?

By no means could I touch anything to do with smoking! I never ever had. Not matches, not ashtrays...not anything. “I won't wear this shirt”, I told my mother.

“It'll go with your eyes and your dark hair. It’s your col-or! Try it on, stubborn kid”, she said, handing the ‘paisley’ shirt to me. She held it up: a button-up thing with long sleeves and an okay wild pattern. I'd checked it out already the day before but rendered it unwearable.

“Didn't you read the label?” I asked.

She read the name on the collar tag aloud, “Marlboro Clothing Company... Aren't you taking this ‘smoking thing’ of yours a little far?! This is a clothing company, for cryin' out loud!”

It was more than just boycotting cigarettes. Intellectually I did know that the clothing company was only coincidentally named the same as the cigarette company. Or was it? I couldn't wear the loud shoes. Couldn’t step on bumpy things, or eat toast if it wasn't cut into three strips. Couldn't speak when expected, my vocabulary was large but words got stuck. I didn’t think my self shy, not at all thank you!! Yet SHY was a word many used to describe me. That made me angry. Not having words was far different than being shy. I didn’t even know what was expected of me till after the fact.

Pica

I knew what I liked. Diarrhea medicine from the refrigerator had a superb chalk taste. I knew that because I enjoyed actual chalk. I scooped spoonfuls of white creamy shortening straight out of the can and in fact I tasted anything in the house labeled ‘non-toxic’. Not something I’d recommend. She didn't know about my pica (eating of non-food objects).

For a long time I loved newspaper. The smell. The feel. Taste. Silky texture as the paper melted on my tongue. I swirled the wet goo around till it was mush. Then chewed. Not quite the same taste as paste, but similar. (I gave up eating newspaper when I thought there was bleach in the paper making my teeth sensitive to hot and cold.) I licked rocks and newly paved roads to see them change color. I ground sand between my teeth; tried to distinguish whether some rocks had ‘better’ flavors than others. I could not touch anything associated with bad smells: not cigarettes, not matches or lighters, not ashtrays, not cigarette packages or cellophane wrappers from cigarette packages, and not labels on shirts that mentioned the cigarettes’ names.

“Pass me that ashtray Kimmy”, the aunt was famous for saying. I exited the room, hearing my mother's laugh; used for special occasions; namely when I embarrassed her.

“Kimmy's got this ‘thing’ about smoking. Ha, ha”, she would say, explaining me.

Sometimes it was an uncle at a picnic: “Stamp that butt out with your shoe, will you Kim?” Yeah right! I’d run around the corner of the house, out of sight, as my mother explained me. Ha, ha.

Appearing rude to people I genuinely liked probably lent to the impression I was a “spoiled brat”. I didn't have a concrete awareness what the term meant. Spoiled meant nasty smelling milk that had gone lumpy or flour with mealy bugs in it. If I was spoiled, there was no hope for me. I figured once they knew about my sensitivities, I thought them rude to ask me to fetch or step on, or smell; things that raped my senses. It took a long time to recover from a hug, eye contact, or from a smell, or sound. I figured ‘stay out of my comfort zone, I stay out of yours’.

The Brief Photo Shoot

“At least wear it long enough for me take your picture with you holding Duchess’ puppies. You can sit by the pool in the grass”, my mother persisted. Since Pistol died of old age, Duchess the hound was the new dog; a heart on a string. Bless her! Now she had puppies. I took the shirt from her as if it were maggot-infested.

There I sat cross-legged in the damp tallish grass alongside the pool, trying to keep three black and white puppies from bumbling off my lap. The ‘suffocation’ intensified with every movement my body made. I could not send an expression to my face. Click! Went the camera. My arms are stiff rods in the photo. She seemed content enough to take my picture without benefit of a pleasant facial expression to enhance the photo. Click! It went again.

My fingers went under my nose to detect whether the smell of the shirt was coming off on my skin. The tag against the back of my neck was a reminder taunting me: The Marlboro company has designed this shirt for you and all its workers chain smoked while sewing the teeny tiny buttons on. Their nicotine stained fingers were all over this thing! Hahahaha jokes on you! The tag was scratching me like a matchbook. I spilled the puppies into the grass and made for the house; careful not to run because when I was agitated I didn’t turn my right foot correctly and I tripped over it.

I didn’t register any pain; just a tearing that I could hear as well as feel; as my wart was clipped clean off on the screened door’s bad nail; the seed wart that used to rub against pencils when I wrote things. Soon I would be rid of the shirt too! In the bathroom I fumbled with too-tiny buttons, unable to remove the shirt fast enough. Crying silently I feared I was soiled forever.

Red rivulets in a watercolor painting couldn't have been prettier than that which trickled over my hand and down my wrist as I turned it. The color was pure; mesmerizing. I studied the black spot in the linoleum that I could not let the bottoms of my feet touch.

When I left the bathroom, bleeding all over myself; I said to her, “I hope you're satisfied. I'm never wearing that shirt again.”

I didn't.