Drinking nail varnish remover smells. And it can kill you to drink it.
One of my modules at university is called 'Political Theatre' and for our first class we had to do a 'political act'. This could be whatever you wanted; there were no rules. I literally spent weeks trying to think of something to do. I've not got a lot of knowledge about politics and struggled to think of something original. Eventually I decided that politics related to something that someone believes strongly enough in. Strongly enough to put their life on the line for the beliefs.
One of my modules at university is called 'Political Theatre' and for our first class we had to do a 'political act'. This could be whatever you wanted; there were no rules. I literally spent weeks trying to think of something to do. I've not got a lot of knowledge about politics and struggled to think of something original. Eventually I decided that politics related to something that someone believes strongly enough in. Strongly enough to put their life on the line for the beliefs.
I got three plastic cups and filled one with water, one with straight vodka and the last with nail varnish remover. I put red food colouring in each so that they all looked the same; the only way to tell them apart was to smell them. You see where this is going?
When it came to my turn to perform my political act, I put the three cups on a chair in the middle of the room and asked for three volunteers. Specifically ones that could smell. I told them that one cup contained water and was safe to drink. The others had vodka and nail varnish remover in. I then announced that I would drink whichever one they told me to.
The reaction from the rest of the class at this was better than anything I could ever have hoped for. There was an audible gasp, with one American student distinctly saying "Oh my God". My point was that as an anosmic, I cannot smell the difference between these three liquids. I won't know what it is until it's actually on my tongue and too late. I purposefully picked nail varnish remover and vodka for this demonstration as I know that both of them have an extremely strong smell; they're also both extremely bad for you, to the extent where consuming one of them would most likely kill you. I wanted to shock my peers and tell them just how dangerous living with ansomia can be, which I think I did.
(Luckily, they did pick the cup with the water in)
The reaction from the rest of the class at this was better than anything I could ever have hoped for. There was an audible gasp, with one American student distinctly saying "Oh my God". My point was that as an anosmic, I cannot smell the difference between these three liquids. I won't know what it is until it's actually on my tongue and too late. I purposefully picked nail varnish remover and vodka for this demonstration as I know that both of them have an extremely strong smell; they're also both extremely bad for you, to the extent where consuming one of them would most likely kill you. I wanted to shock my peers and tell them just how dangerous living with ansomia can be, which I think I did.
(Luckily, they did pick the cup with the water in)
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