When I say my mother smells funny, I don't mean that she has an odor or can sniff out humor, but that her senses have been altered. A number of years ago, my mother slipped on a bathroom floor and hit her head. The displacement of her brain stunned her seventh nerve and severed her olfactory bulb, which convey taste and smell, respectively. For several weeks the experience of eating was like chewing textured cardboard. Her sense of texture was intact, but if she closed her eyes she couldn’t tell the difference between biting into a fresh apple and biting into a raw potato. Luckily, her taste recovered (debatable), but her smell hasn’t.