BLOWIN' IN THE WIND

This morning I checked in at Womanchild where the fabulous Allison writes and shares her incredible photos. I love her Daily Specials too! Being a New Yorker she commutes via public transportation, a world that is foreign to me since I live in the car culture on the left coast.  I drive my car to the grocery store that is 2 and 1/2 city blocks from where I live, but that's only because the time I decided to walk to the store I forgot and bought a whole grocery cart full of stuff that I could no way carry home.  Not even only two and 1/2 blocks.  I had to go get my car and come back to pick up my groceries!

In her day-by-day journal entry for today, Allison shared yet another one of her adventures from the subway.  Someone broke wind in her face as she ascended the stairs to the street, her face level with the butt of the person on the stairs in front of her.  She has shared other subway stories that involved weird levels of intimacy that take place between commuters, like the girl that was standing very close to her who finally reached out and caressed her hair, but today's story made me cringe!  Not just for Allison who started her day with a breath of intestinal stench but for the person who let it rip.

I am making the assumption of course, that they had no control, that the pressure was too much, that it slipped out.  Because I cannot imagine farting in public.  For me that is almost as bad as peeing in the bushes (although in extreme emergencies, e.g. no options I have copped a squat in the bushes).  I mean just hold on until you can get someplace out of close proximity to others.  Or at least out of hearing range.  I guess that's why I figure the ass in Alli's face couldn't help it.

But there are people in this world who are just fine with sharing their baser human qualities with the general public.  Like frat boys on beer who can fart on command.  What is it with guys and farting?  Oh, and then there's Jessica Simpson who burps and farts and talks about her bowel movements on MTV.  And no I don't watch that show - I do hear the highlights on the morning drive radio station the next day.  The two bozos who host that show have referred to her as the ugliest hot chick in existence whom Nick Lachey would never have married if she didn't make him do so for the pooty.

I had a boyfriend who used to experience all kinds of intestinal drama and he thought it was funny to pull the blankets over my slumbering head as it rested on his chest in the morning, creating a seal under his chin, and then letting one go.  That is a traumatic way to wake up - but he thought it was funny.  I wonder if he still thought farting was funny after 4 years in prison? (another story for another time)

Maybe it's because I have a sensitive nose and I have actually gagged on bad smells, but I don't think farting is funny.  Especially not stinky farts.  I mean seriously go to the doctor!  Something is not right when hot air emitted from your body can bring tears to the eyes of the people around you.

I suppose in the grand scheme of things passing gas in public isn't that big a deal - unless you're in junior high, in which case the potential exists for nicknaming and social ostracism - but it takes a certain kind of person to be able to fart in public without an inner cringe of embarrassment.  Like the person who went up the stairs and casually farted in the face of the charming young woman bringing up the rear, so to speak.  Or like my mother.

Yes, my mother is a prodigious farter.  And lucky for her she's a very beautiful woman whom you would never identify as the culprit in response to the cry, "who farted?"  She usually blames it on someone, like her husband, unless she's caught standing alone amidst the ringing echo of the fart.  Like the time we went shopping for a Christmas tree.

You know how at a Christmas tree farm, where the trees are lined up, you wander around as if in a meticulously laid out forest until you find the tree you want?  And in the area where the trees are quite large you may lose sight of other people?  That's where we were looking at trees.  I was on one side of a gorgeous 9 ft spruce and standing about 4 feet away from me was another woman who had wandered into our part of the forest.  My mother had no idea that she was there since she was down a tree or two and blocked from sight.  She was talking away about whether we should get a Spruce or a Pine tree when, thinking it was just us, she broke wind.  And it was a mighty wind that went on and on and on so that she was actually talking over the cacophony of her fart.  The woman next to me stopped in her tracks, her head tilted up in curiousity.  I turned bright red and scuttled toward the sound of my mother's voice, frantically gesticulating and advising her sotto voce, that we were not alone.  And then we started giggling hysterically, though we tried to at least muffle that - so that we were making even weirder sounds among the Christmas trees.

Although I am grateful for my mother's gene pool when it comes to cheekbones and long legs I fear I may also get her windy guts.  I guess it's a good thing I've got her sense of humor.