Most of you are scared to go there. Your guy friends laugh nervously when you broach the topic at lunch, and your good, but not best friends mentally move you from their classy-has-it-together category of friends to the perverted-don’t-bring-around-grandma one when you bring it up. But if not now, when?
Perhaps you’ve started dating a new person, you’re smitten, you’re spooning, you’re sleeping, you accidentally had more cheese than your digestive system can quietly process (ie any), your ear plus are nestled in your ears because you’re a light sleeper and it’s morning enough to see a hand in front of your face, but not morning enough to read a poem aloud, and it happens. You release a fart so loud, on this man’s, er, crotch that it actually wakes you up. You hear the clamor through your earplugs that are guaranteed to reduce noise to a 22dB rating.
What is a person to do now? Has Miss Manners ever received inquiry of such a predicament? You might stiffen suddenly and hope that the man snuggled so closely to your derriere is as deep a sleeper as he claims to be. Or if you’re me you will probably wake him up and tell him exactly what just happened because you know that he must have heard it and you can’t bear the thought of a disregarded embarrassment.
My mother recently told me that after decades and decades of marriage she has never farted in front of my father. This is appalling and impressive at once especially after considering that scene in Good Will Hunting. Robin Williams’s character breaks through to the hardened Will Hunter while discussing his late wife and how she would wake herself up farting. For him this was one of her most endearing qualities and they laugh hysterically over this fart story in his office. This exchange is is a defining point in their relationship and I would like to advice anyone who is in the “disregard” category of farts to watch this scene.
One of my favorite parts of working at an elementary school in college was that I could fart at anytime and blame it on the children. As I was waiting for the last child to be picked up by his father on a Friday afternoon I thought it would be funny to fart. No one else would know besides him and I, after all and the fart is a staple in the sense of humor of a second grader. The seven year old laughed for nearly five minutes until stern foot steps pounded the ramp into the classroom and he ran to his father.
“Dad! Allyson just farted!” The father just stood there and stared at me. His Match.com divorcee profile definitely contained “disregards farts.”
So, when does one acknowledge a fart? Laugh about it? Disregard it? It there a proper practice in place as far as fart manners go? Is it a case-by-case basis? Is it always funny? Is it never funny? Do we care more about our own farts than other people do? These are the deep questions I ponder during savasana in yoga class, usually after someone has farted during a lengthy exhale. When I admitted to the sleeping man next to me that I had accidentally farted on him he told me that I probably could have kept that to myself, that he would have never known about it…
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