OCTOBER 10, 2020 – Given headlines of late, one must summon humor to temper dark weather—actual and figurative—that bears down on the country.
When there’s a humor shortage, my youngest niece knows how to remedy the situation. She pulls out the whoopee cushion. No matter how staid and serious the company, Maia pulls everyone present into the act.
I suppose the key to understanding the humor in fake farts is knowing what makes us laugh at actual flatulence.
A big part of the “funny” in “farting” is cultural. In America, we guffaw quite liberally in response to the passing of gas. Not so in other parts of the world. After an orchestra tour to the Far East, for example, one of my sisters informed me that in Hong Kong, at least, people think nothing more of audible gas-letting than they do of throat-clearing—even, as she told the story—if someone farts at a formal dinner honoring visiting symphony players.
It might be too that laughing about farts is generational. I don’t remember my grandparents ever expressing the slightest humor in response to flatulence, and concomitantly, I don’t remember that they ever farted in my presence, however much they might have suffered the need to do so. It was clearly off limits. I observed this tacit (as it were) rule myself whenever I felt the pressure to do otherwise in their presence.
My parents, on the other hand, were of quite a different philosophy. Perhaps it was WW II that had caused them to cut loose from their elders’ restraint. The Greatest Generation had survived a lot of . . . well, serious stuff . . . so perhaps they felt entitled to make noise in celebration of victory.
When I was a toddler, I remember my mom passing gas as I followed her around the house. Every so often she’d subconsciously say, “Excuse me,” and I’d wonder if she was talking to some invisible visitor who happened to be standing in her way.
My dad, on the other hand, never apologized for farting in my presence. Just the opposite. He’d laugh . . . and I’d laugh at him laughing. His favorite venue for farting was our aluminum rowboat up at the lake. If he happened to experience an unusually large build-up of bodily methane, he’d remove his seat cushion to leverage the reverberation of his aluminum bench-seat. On one very still evening, he managed to trigger an echo off the treelined shore. That surprising effect made us laugh pretty hard.
The funniest fart I ever heard, however, was in the middle of a final exam in college. The room was so quiet, you’d have thought you’d lost your hearing. In the midst of our hyper-concentration, someone . . . let out a very short, very high-pitched squeaker. It was quickly engulfed by silence—but not for long. In delayed response, someone giggled, then another and another. Before long, everyone in the room was in hysterics.
I wonder if the prof reviewing our blue books noticed the break in everyone’s train of thought.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
