A Poot Too Far

Deep down, who doesn't like farts? The sheer variety of toots that can be emitted from the single instrument is a credit to our creativity. It's all about pressure, volume, and embouchure, but you can't discount practice. I myself have so much affection for the subject that I can still recall individual productions. As a mail carrier, I was accustomed to being on my own, which is helpful if you have performance anxiety. A few stand out.

There was the day I was stuck in an otherwise empty apartment mailroom with sweet old Mrs. Gilbride and a bellyful of burrito. She could not be persuaded to flee the impending blast. Finally I realized she was nearly stone deaf and I cut loose with a mighty boom. Mrs. Gilbride's arms sprang out and she jolted visibly and quacked "What the hell was that?"

In my defense, I believe she did not hear it, but was caught in the concussion.

At the other end of the spectrum was the gentle raindrop plup I emitted one fine day, followed by another, and then the dawning realization that I had enough ammunition in the chamber to plup my way plup plup all the way to the next delivery, one plup by one, and no witnesses in sight, plup plup plup; a discovery that made me so happy I parceled them out plup one per footstep plup with enough in reserve to finish with a slide-whistle flourish plup plup peee-oooooooo-wiiiip! right at the destination mail slot. Where the meter reader stepped out from behind the shrubbery. Damn cheerful fellow, he was.

Then there was the time I got in the elevator in a small apartment building to deliver a package. This apartment was filled with working folk and I rarely saw anyone in there in the daytime. I entered the elevator and filled it with confidence and reminiscences of my most recent lunch. "Other people's farts are disgusting," I remember a comic observing once, "but your own are always kind of interesting."

Mine was. Notes of fennel, garlic-forward, with a structure of pork sausage, and a smooth navy-bean finish.

Ding.

No one is ever home at that apartment building. Nevertheless the elevator slowed and the door opened and a handsome young man entered with his Labrador retriever. He smiled, moved to the back, and turned toward the door, following protocol. His nose wrinkled.

"Oh, man, I'm sorry. Duke, bad boy!"

"It happens," I smiled, vowing to buy a lottery ticket later.

But I am only a grade-B flatulist in comparison with Dave, the Maestro of Methane. Ever tuneful and creative, with an impressive repertoire, he is also capable of a world-class eruption when sound asleep, a titanic airhorn blast, causing zoo elephants across town to ripple their ears in solidarity, railroad crossing gates to close, and schoolchildren for miles around to file outside and wait for the all-clear. Startled house guests fret, once their heart rates come back down, that he must have injured himself, but they underestimate his stamina and years of training. What does your husband do? acquaintances query, and this is always the first thing that comes to mind.

Also, he's a great cook.

Toot Suite

I'm always scouring the newspaper for good riffable stories, articles that poke out from the rest, things that hit some of my favorite themes. Piety. Perspective. Poop. And one day a few months ago a headline jumped out at me. "Evacuation Precedes Gas Blast," it said, which certainly struck me as newsworthy, because in my experience the evacuation comes just after the gas blast. I was soon disappointed to learn that the article was about a terrible explosion in Massachusetts that flattened a strip club. I can't even visualize that. Seems like it would be hard to do.

All was not lost, however. A few pages later, there was a photo of a young lad with his ear glued to a fart simulator. Bingo! He was attending the Grossology exhibit at our science museum, celebrating everything that smells, toots, crusts over, or slides out of you. Well, we just had to go, as it were. This is not your father's science museum, with its cheesy dioramas, rock collections, and gigantic murals depicting every known dinosaur arrayed in front of a mandatory set of volcanoes. Here, children could climb a wall of zits. Or go all the way inside of a nose, something many of them have trained for their whole lives. The little boogers were everywhere.

The Wall Of Zits

In the giant nose, we learn that snot is produced in order to protect the lungs. Snot catches random particles and pollutants before they can be inhaled all the way. It's a slick system. Cilia move the snot along until it is flushed away. Eventually. By sliding it down our throats at the rate of about a liter a day. Funny thing: if someone gave you a bucket of warm dirty snot, you probably wouldn't drink it even if you knew you were the snot donor and had banked it yourself. But apparently we're doing that all the time. It's sort of like the phone and cable fees. They're being siphoned out of our wallets more or less continuously in small quantities that we don't even notice. If we just got hit up annually with a $400 fee labeled "chump charge," we might make more of a fuss. Same way

with snot.

Adults were enchanted also. "This is right up our alley," the newspaper quoted a visiting mother, although she was probably referring to the intestine exhibit. There was an entire gastro-intestinal tract set up for kids to slide through, and a lot of information, almost more than a person could digest. "You must be this tasty to enter," the sign said (oh, I wish it had), and enter they did. And exit. Cute little shits they were.

But the star attraction was the flatulence display. Here a group of avid youngsters was allowed to play with a series of stretchy rubber gaskets mounted on air tubes, and they were encouraged to regulate the air and stretchiness to produce the grand human fart repertoire: the splendid variety of fart noises we are capable of, depending on embouchure, tension, volume, and pressure. I felt encouraged for America. These were our future scientists! Or possibly postal employees. Either way, proud.

Thanks again to those who have pledged to sponsor me in my upcoming Birdathon! Y'all are too cool. Proceeds go to the good work of the Portland Audubon Society. And I wrote a poem for the occasion.

The Flatulympics

I have no memory of anyone in my family farting, ever. It just wasn't done.

I do realize that it probably happened. Otherwise our whole family would have been bobbing about on the ceiling like balloons in the Macy's parade, and I'm sure I'd remember that. And looking back, I now see that my brother was probably world-class. All I knew was you did not want to go in the bathroom after he'd been in it. He always planted a major fug in there, part aftershave, part cigarettes and part Fumes of Mystery. My eyebrows still haven't grown back all the way.

I also remember it happening to me at least once. I've only got about ten memories from first grade, but tops among them was the time I farted and Chris Ripper smelled it and he got all the kids to stand up in a line so he could sniff their butts. Chris probably had a lot of self-confidence to pull that off, and I don't remember anyone flinging that "he who smelt it, dealt it" line at him. Anyway he passed right by my butt without fingering me, as it were, and that's probably why it's so vivid. You always remember your biggest humiliations and triumphs, and while that one could have gone either way, I put it in the "triumph" column.

(The next memory I have of Chris Ripper was in tenth-grade biology, when we were doing a study of blood types and had to prick our own fingers with a lancet, and he volunteered--with glee, mind you--to stab all the leery ones. I wonder what Chris is up to now. I really do.)

So if I don't remember any farting in my family, it must be because I learned early on that such a thing was never to be remarked upon, or noticed in any way, and I took that to heart so much that my memory slate was wiped clean. As it were.

But although I signed on for much of our family ethic, in this respect at least, the apple fell from the tree and hasn't stopped rolling away. I now live in a household in which flatulence is a competitive sport. No matter what sort of noise I might make, Dave can imitate it. We go back and forth. It's a form of conversation, I maintain, and while not elevated, it serves a lot of the same function of ordinary discourse ("hello, I'm here, I care, I'm listening"). We're not just talking about the weather; we're doing something about it.

I remain fascinated that so many different sounds can be made with just the one instrument. It's a matter of embouchure, just like in woodwinds, I assume; everything from the little squeal to the pop-pop-pop-pop to something worthy of a ship in fog. And we both try to hold back enough ammunition to get in the last word. (Also, we do our own laundry.)

One of the beautiful things about modern technology is you can write an essay about farting and blast it all over the planet (as it were), and somebody out there will care. The blogosphere is a cozy place, and there are all sorts of interest groups and communities in it. There's something for everyone. There are mommy blogs and birding blogs and art blogs and knitting blogs and wingnut blogs, left and right. And sometimes when you're bobbing about on the ceiling of the blogosphere, you can recognize a kindred spirit, someone who holds your core values. A case in point would be Don Joe, the proprietor of the very funny blog Workforced. Ostensibly, it's about life in the modern office; but after reading this post and that post and OMG this one, I realized that Don was essentially putting out the same inspirational message I am.

Pull my finger.