Teaching elementary school inducts one into the
Farts Are Always Funny Club. I never liked teaching fourth grade for this
reason alone. I always call fourth graders burpers and farters. They think
bodily functions are hilarious! Fifth
grade boys are members of the “club” but fifth grade girls try to make boys
think they think farts are disgusting. When boys let one go in my classroom I
have to be the bad guy and give them the
“no-really-YOU-aren’t-doing-that-in-MY-classroom look”. But really farts are always funny!
I remember as a young girl being in the grocery
store with my grandmother and her ripping one. It sounded like a motorboat heading out to deep water. I was
appalled that MY grandmother would fart in public. When I expressed my feelings
to her she said, “Someday you’re going to be old, like me, looking for an empty
aisle in the store. Keep quiet, keep walking and we may be far away before
anyone notices.” So we proceeded to motorboat our way down the aisle as quickly
as possible. When I got home and recounted the story to the family we all
howled until we cried. Farts are always funny.
I remember Bill Cosby did a portion of his stand up
routine on farts. And recently, there is a popular youtube video on “breaking
the barrier”. Yep, farts always
have been and always will be funny.
My favorite chapter of the book The BFG by
Roald Dahl is called “Frobscottle and Whizpoppers”. The chapter is about
farting and being proud of one’s ability to “rattle the glass jars on the shelves
and make the walls of the cave reverberate like thunder”. When I read this
chapter to children and adults tears of laughter are always rolling. Farts are
always funny.
I am fifty-seven years old and I have learned that
with age comes gassiness. I now understand my grandmother’s dilemma. It is
painful to hold gas in. I, too, am continually in search of an “empty
aisle”. I walk at the end of my
class’s line for a reason. I am
not a motorboater like my grandmother. I am the SBD type and when I let one go I pray that it is
Silent and not Deadly.
This summer while in Montana we had quite a
gigglefest about farting. Caren’s
home is in the woods and has very poor TV reception, so we spend a lot of time
playing games at the kitchen table. Caren, my cousin Kelly, a friend I teach
with Ally, and myself were playing Yahtzee. We had spent the day at the
Flathead Cherry Festival tasting cherries and eating cherry pastries. One must
be careful with one’s cherry consumption, if one doesn’t want an intestinal
problem that always begins with gas.
Caren and I are in our fifties and Kelly is in her forties so we are at
“that” age where we can’t and probably don’t want to hold things inside. Poor
Ally being only in her early twenties and having the capability to hold it was
surrounded and doomed! I thought
the one I let go was going to be just silent but I was wrong. It made one’s eyes water like the
weeping walls at Glacier National Park. Of course, like my father, I tried to
blame it on the dogs but they weren’t in the room. And then we started laughing
and Caren had to shout the “sistah” mantra, “Stop, I’m gonna to pee!” Then
Caren who doesn’t try to be sneaky about anything let one rip. Caren doesn’t do
anything half-assed not even farting. Ally’s eyes got as big as saucers and
laughing she said, “Now that was like a whoopee cushion!” Again the “sistah”
mantra was shouted by all, “Stop, I’m gonna pee!”
The evening continued with a melody of gaseous
explosions. We farted and laughed, farted and howled and peed, and farted some
more. We could have gone on the road as the Flathead Cherry Festival
Quartet. We too “made the glass
jars rattle on the shelves and the walls reverberate like thunder”. The BFG
would have been proud. Farts are always funny.
Paco’s Perspective
Good thing no one lit a match!
The Flip Side
There was one that sounded like a bear growling.
That’s when I hid under the bed.
