Farts....

Farts...

I wrote a story tonight involving a fart. The fart was the seed for the idea, which grew in my mind into what I hope is a humorous literary adventure. It is roughly 3800 words. I am going to let it rest for a week, and look at it again. I am simply pleased that I was able to start and finish a story. Starting has not been the problem, lately. Finishing has.

Part of the inspiration for the story was the exchange of fart stories at work, today. I've worked too long in my particular industry, and I would like to know if farts and farting are as funny in other industries and businesses, or at the very least as pervading and prevalent as they are in mine. I ask, because the three of us telling these stories could have gone on for hours on farts alone. While this is maybe some commentary on the mindset, and the fact that we don't have enough to truly tax our brains while working, I gotta wonder if the Pope and his Cardinals sit around at break time laughing about somebody sneaking a toot out during a confession....

Anyway. Because I seem to have excess energy of the hands, while I sit and watch the Steelers and Ravens...a few fart anecdotes that somehow involve me....

• One time, I was driving from college to my parents' house. It was a weekend, and it was winter. My windows were up. I had eaten chili for supper the previous evening. The effects were spectacular. Halfway through the trip, I stopped at a gas station to pick up a coke. I returned to my truck, open the door, and the smell of rotting cabbage and burning hair hits me like a wall. I could only wonder just how much of that methane gas had trapped itself in my clothing, and whether the folks at the gas n' gulp on Monteagle Mountain were just used to people smelling like they'd just finished shitting their pants, or if they were simply too polite to point it out....
• I worked with a gentleman named Charles, who was possessed of little emotion. I think I've written of Charles before. He was an older fellow, who lived with his sister and brother-in-law and referred to them as such...not by name, even in the act of speaking to them and addressing them. As I stated, he rarely expressed any manner of emotion. In private, I called him "Porno Data," because he was like Data, from Star Trek the Next Generation...and I once saw him emerging from the BP station close to work with a six pack of beer and a large stack of porno magazine, that has little bearing on this story. Anyway....one day, Charles farted every time he squatted. Which was a trifle unfortunate, because he was having to squat A LOT. After several minutes of this, I started laughing. When he asked what I was laughing at, I mentioned his accidental flatulence. To which Charles responded by becoming insanely angry, denying the charge. It was the most emotion I ever saw the man display, before or after. This has nothing to do with the flatulence, but I wonder if Charles is dead or alive.
• Once, while at work, I was working hunkered in a corner, getting products ready to send back for credit. A vendor representative came into the room to find a quiet place to make his notes and send an order. As he punched data into his handheld computer, he raised his left leg off the ground, and leaned slightly to the right. This apparently eased compression enough for him to release a trumpet blast out that, frankly, I'd have been crowing about. I stopped what I was doing, stunned mostly that the gentleman almost couldn't have not seen me as he walked in the room. Turns out, though, he did, as he almost let out a little scream when he turned back around to see me. "I didn't know you were there," he said. "I hope not," I replied. "I'd hate to think we'd moved that far into our relationship so quickly...."
• The Evil Hippy, when we were roommates in college, perfected the art of farting into a box fan. I have to say that genius is in the small things in life, and finding a propulsion system to augment your own in the name of quickly spreading your gift to the masses in such a simple manner deserves nothing less than a Nobel Prize.
• My grandmother had a stroke when I was 12. She was visiting our house at the time, and ended up spending a great deal of time in the Patricia Neal center up in Knoxville. My aunt and cousins came to visit her from Delaware. I was riding up an elevator with my Aunt Pat, along with a two nurses, and a patient in wheelchair. The patient, an elderly and rather oblivious lady, shifted in her chair and let out a blast that, to tell you the truth, might have contained more than gas. Me being 12, I was struggling not to laugh. I failed when one nurse turns to the other, and says "Doctor Who?" It's an old joke, but it was the first time I'd ever heard it....
• My school sent the kids in the gifted program on "Summer Enrichment Trips" every year. We'd go to Colonial Williamsburg, or historic Georgia, or something similar. One year, we were assigned seats on the bus. I was seated next to a kid of Indian descent named Hemal. Hemal was gassy. Hemal enjoyed the fact. Hemal was vegetarian, and his farts smelled like wet compost. I did not enjoy the seating arrangement. Neither did the teacher who sat in front of us, who on the third day, began charging Hemal a dime every time Hemal farted. I saw that teacher several weeks back, and he brought it up. He still remembered that he made $1.90 the last three days of the trip.
• My friend Julie laments a trip we took from Murfreesboro to Jefferson City to see our friend Lesli get married. Jason and I made that trip Hell for her, simply by replaying scenarios involving bees and squirrels interrupting the wedding over, ad nauseum. We are idiots, I grant you. What she does not know, is that I held a fart in nearly the entire ride back. How's that for chivalry?
• I lived with my folks a little while after moving back to East TN. I'm not sure the venture was good for any of our mental stabilities, but there was the night my Dad and I were sitting in their sunroom, with their pug Max. Dad farts, because he too thinks farts are funny. Max, however, went into a barking fit that is still legend. I'm not sure what noise the Devil makes in his imagination, but it's something close to a coleslaw fart, I would imagine....
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