What’s Your Sense?
The dominant sense for humans is sight. But set that aside for a minute. What are your other four senses like?
I have to admit my sense of hearing is pretty dull. It’s adequate, but I have limited abiity to pick up fine details. Put earphones on me and play a recording of a Beethoven piano sonata, and I’ll hear the notes but don’t ask me to say anything about the richness of the tone or the whether it’s slightly sharp or flat.
Likewise, my sense of smell is there but unrefined. And as far as taste, same deal. You can pour me a cup of coffee and I can tell if it’s higher end dark roast or cheap diner coffee. But don’t ask me to pick out notes of berry or spice from a cup.
I will defend my sense of touch, however. I can sort a bag of rice grains in the dark by size. Maybe I exaggerate a bit, but I am able to notice small things just by feel.
What About You?
Do you have perfect pitch? Can you hear a fly buzzing in a room before anyone else? Maybe you have supersensitive taste buds and can tell the difference between domestic and imported brie? Or maybe even with a patient salesperson at a fragrance counter you can’t pick out a single element in a bottle of perfume?
How good are your non-seeing senses, and has this either been a benefit for you (you got a job at a winery) or a problem (nobody trusts you to add salt when you’re cooking)? Does your family tell you that your collection of Yankee Candles should remain unlit at holiday gatherings? Or does a friend ask you to help shop for a couch because you’re the one who can tell when a sofa fabric will be truly comfortable during a nap in the middle of an NFL game?
Put vision away, dear Deadsplintersensors. Share with us something about your taste, smell, touch or hearing!
what sense does movement fall under?
my eyesight is meh
my hearing is worse than meh
nothing moves around me without me noticing
…..
also i must bat at all tassles
i may have been a useless cat in a previous life
but no really… movement is my thing….i notice and look at all
Surprisingly, I still have pretty good hearing after all my loud music days. I can pick out birds or other things from a good distance. I have a very good sense of smell & taste for certain things like wine & beer. I can pick out certain hops from beers like Sabro, Citra, HBC 586 & Nectaron. Wine is a little less refined but I can pick out a Merlot from a Cab Sauv or Cab Franc or Barollo. Can’t do all the crazy descriptors but know what’s good or not.
I can tell beer is hopped but trying to distinguish between most varieties is too hard for me.
When I make beer I’ve given up on complicated recipes for that reason.
since corona my sence of smell is gone tho….i get occasional whifs of shit at best….
but whatever
as you asked whats my sense….and ive now thought about it
i have the fuck it sense
you know…that one where your body tells you to please back the fuck out of what you are doing and cut your losses
fuck it im out
(learnt i had it when a london corner dealer took me for a walk into londons seedy underbelly….i cut me losses and called it a day once i ran out of cctv cameras)
I’ve heard from a number I wouldn’t have expected that the sense of smell still hasn’t returned. Weird.
I’ve got a really good sense of hearing for background noises and soft sounds.
I inherited my dad’s hearing which means I can pick up a lot of background noises (that was how I discovered my furnace failed.) It drove my former housemate nuts because he claimed I was too sensitive to noise (I am) but he was still going deaf regardless of how good my hearing was.
My sense of smell stinks due to two adenoid removals.
I inherited my mom’s super taster tongue. It is why I don’t like certain foods (raw cauliflower for example). Sometimes I can break down ingredients to my mom’s dismay. I usually figured out if mom tinkered with her recipes.
Prior to Covid my sense of smell (and therefore also taste) was excellent. Now I’m feeling like I’m missing out on everything and unable to discern if things even stink.
My hearing has also always been great. I’m the type of person who can’t fall asleep in a room with plugged in electronics because I hear them buzzing. Which is very annoying for my husband when he WFH in our bedroom and had to unplug all his computer stuff every night.
Those senses made up for my shit vision. Which has been shit since around third grade.
Does white noise block out electronics or only make them worse?
Yeah, I have to sleep with a fan or every sound will wake me up.
White noise is worse. It might be the children’s apps I’ve tried. I can hear the loop repeat and then it gets on my nerves like a leaking faucet.
i’m a synesthete
I don’t have perfect pitch, but I have relative pitch. You give me a note and I can sing any interval up or down. It’s something trained. I learned via the Solfeggio method. It’s pretty useful. More useful than perfect pitch. I know a guy with perfect pitch and he goes a little nuts when he hears an instrument that is not tuned to A-440.
I have also learned that perfect pitch is much more common in East Asian countries that speak languages that rely on pitch information for meaning like Cantonese or Vietnamese. The same word spoken at a different pitch has a different meaning. East Asian kids raised in the West don’t develop perfect pitch at nearly the same rate.
I can’t sing worth shit but I can hear when someone is sharp or flat and that can be rough sometimes!
I bet. I can also hear if something is sharp or flat but only relative to another tone.
Be careful if you google “Solfeggio” because all the results you get will be some happy horseshit about “sacred, healing frequencies” and all sorts of new age crapola. What you want is the Solfeggio Method which has nothing to do with all that nonsense.
This is all you need.