Imagine growing up. In your world you interact with people and everyone if warm, loving, and everything seems normal. You learn that people breath in through their noses and they say "this smells good!" Or "This is really sweet." You try it. Nothing new from doing this, but you assume its just what people do. You're now old enough to go to school, and it's reccess. Everyone in the next room runs out screaming It's so stinky!! He farted!!" You have no idea what that means so curiosity tells you to check it out. Nothing different about the room. You try what people call "smelling" and still you don't sense anything different. Odd. Later, mom buys you a scented doll who smells like strawberries. You put your nose up to the doll and sniff. Nothing. You tell mom "I don't smell anything." She looks at you funny, smells the doll, then waves her hand "Oh its ok, there's not much scent left on her." You think something's off, but you don't want to tell mom she's wrong. After all, mom's always right (when you're five and still learning about life).
This is something I'm passionate about. I don't know if I was born with no sense of smell of it I lost it, but it was around age five that I started to notice I couldn't smell. It wasn't a big deal back then, All that concerned me at that time was not being able to smell foods, perfumes, flowers, and at that age, not being able to smell, not knowing what smell was, I brushed it off and was not interested and focused on just having fun and playing. I didn't really know stuff had smell. I picked up on that fact that poop and fart smelled stinky, and cartoons taught me pee was also bad. foods that tasted a certain way were supposed to smell like it. So sweet buns and pastries were "sweet," warm foods were generally "sweet," spicy food was "spicy" and so on. So I learned things smell like what they taste like. The stronger the taste, presumably the stronger the smell. Driving behind a truck spewing fumes smelled "bad" and somewhere I'd tasted metal, so I assumed that smog from trucks and cars smelled like "fart and acid."
However, if you were to tell me I'm disabled, my life is missing something, I should be fixed to be able to smell, I'd say no. Sure, I'd love to be able to smell something and know what the hell all the hype is about. But I've grown up with anosmia. I've grown up not being able to smell, and it's part of who I am. If there was new technology that helped me gain a sense of smell, I'd lose what made me special, I'd be able to do what others can, but I wouldn't know what to do with it. It's like dreaming and dreaming of your wedding day. No matter what happens now, you've got something to work towards. You have a purpose in life. Once your wedding day passes though, what then? What if it's not as amazing as you thought it was? Now your dream is over, and you're sucked into the world of married adults. You lose the part of you who was young and dreamy, and you can't really go back to pre-married life. you can go on to being divorced, but never to who you once were.
Now I can't say it's exactly the same for those who are hard of hearing or deaf. The sense of smell for me is small compared to the sense of hearing. But it's comparable. They grew up in a world where others could do things they couldn't do. But it doesn't stop their abilities. They are only hindered by what others say they can't do. I had it easy where I could hide my anosmia and no one could tell me I couldn't do something. They had to learn what sounds go with what actions, like a dog makes sounds when he barks, and he's not just moving his mouth. I had to learn what items and things had smell and what it smelled like. In fact I recently learned coffee has a strong odor to it. Before I told my friend, I thought coffee, which looks like brown milk smelled like brown milk which is chocolate milk which I believe smells like it tastes. And even more rare than anosmia, is temporal dysplasia, lack of sense of time. In their world they are perfectly functional and it's normal to had little or no emotion because they don't need it as far as they're concerned. However, they need to actively learn to reecognize emotions, as the Deaf community had to actively learn about what makes sound, as I had to semi-actively learn what has an odor.
As for when you meet someone lacking a sense, as with any condition, you acknowledge it if they bring it up, don't just brush it off to the side because you don't know how to talk about it. Let them do the talking. It was horrible when each time I brought it up with my mom she would brush it off and change the subject, and I couldn't talk about it, not even just to share or express myself. All I wanted was someone to listen, I wasn't asking for advice, help or anything from her.
I don't want anyone to think I speak for the Deaf, people with temporal dysplasia, or everyone who has anosmia. I am simply putting this out there for everyone who can't understand what it's like to live in a world without smell, without sense of time, without sound because they have always had these senses. It's such a deep part of a person, that its hard to imagine what a world is like without these senses. I would like people to read this and be a bit more sensitive about what you assume about people based on what senses they have, what they look like, etc. Lacking a sense is what it is. It's not abnormal, a disability, nor does it mean we are any less capable than someone with all their senses. We are perfectly normal, it's just society and the majority of humanity that tells us our lack of a sense makes us less.
Of course, there are physical limitations to what we can and can't do. With no sense of smell, I won't know if my milk has gone bad, if you just drank alcohol or ate something, or if there's smoke. But I can use my other senses and prior knowledge and logic to figure it out. Without a sense of hearing people may not know if there's a doorbell, if someone is trying to honk at you, or yelling for you to watch out for a ball coming your way. But you just need to be a bit more aware of your surroundings. Without sense of time, you just need to learn to estimate the passage of time, and recognize emotions and what it means for the person experiencing those emotions.