P-p-f-f-f-t!

…in which Uncle Duke examines the fine art of farting.

There is a researcher in Colorado who has spent 20 years studying cow flatulence. I find that amazing. What is even more amazing though is that he reports that cows emits 200 to 400 quarts of methane gas a day. That's each and every cow! In case you don't have a calculator handy, that comes to about 50 million malodorous metric tons per year. Sheep, water buffalo, goats, camels, llamas, deer, elk and caribou are other major offenders, but cows are the worst. It turns out that cows are contributors in a significant way to the Greenhouse Effect, the potentially catastrophic warming of the globe. Wouldn't that be the pits? We avert atomic holocaust and nuclear radiation only to be done in by dense clouds of cow farts. What irony!

I guess I am also somewhat amazed by my own fascination with waste gases. I've always thought of them as one of Nature's funniest phenomenons, but others seemed less amused. That's perhaps understating it. No, they were embarrassed, disgusted. Embarrassed if it was them, disgusted if it was me.

I've never understood that reaction. I mean, this guy in Colorado says humans put out about a quart of gas a day themselves, so it's not like no one ever toots. Literally everyone is walking around everyday silently making wind and pretending that they didn't, looking around and trying to blame it on someone else. I know how these things work. In grade school I sat next to Beano Spalding who, besides having the gastro-intestinal system of a billygoat, was kind of a rectal ventriloquist. He would throw abrupt, raucous noises in my direction and then look over at me like I was some kind of lagoon slime. Sr. Agnes Marie would always nail me cause I'd laugh the loudest, and I'd wind up staying after school writing "I will not make rude, disgusting noises in class" several hundred thousand times. This accounts in part for my penmanship.

Outside of class, however, in our own private boy company, farting was high art. There were those who could biff on command, and they were always fun to be around. I could never stay mad at Beano 'cause things were never dull around him. There is nothing like a well-timed mega-fart to bring a little levity to just about any occasion. We recognized that belching and farting were the grandest and funniest things in the Universe and we did so at every opportunity, never muffling what could be amplified. On summer nights, in each other's backyards, we'd rock back and light our emissions, sending little blue poofs of flame into the air. No fireworks before or since were ever so entertaining.

Even reproductions were funny. When Nature failed us, we'd spend hours practicing uncouth sounds with our hands, mouths and armpits. If musical instruments could replicate embarrassing bodily noise, we'd all be symphony musicians now. I always felt there should have been some national competition for proficiency in simulated honking, a sort of Star Search for underarm bleaters. Those who were best at it were seldom rewarded elsewhere, that's for sure.

Girls never cut any cheese. Not out loud anyway. They didn't seem to take as much pleasure in it as we did and certainly never made as great a display of it. I've never been to a pajama party, but somehow I find it unlikely that they stayed up late judging and grading each other's rumblings in length, magnitude and aroma like we did. I never did know how they amused themselves actually, or what they thought was funny. But like I say, I've never pretended to be a particularly good student of women.

So I admit it. Loud, inappropriate noises make me laugh. And if they are accompanied by a certain rankness, well so much the funnier. It's one of those things I just never outgrew. Why others frowned and were revolted I never figured out. Another example of my arrested development, I guess. I thought I was just weird. I was ashamed. I stifled myself and feigned disgust.

Until my boys came along. I noticed from the first that they found them hilarious as well. We are kindred souls, yes indeedy. Beau Baylor giggles, guffaws and heehaws when he makes bubbles in the bath. Caleb snorts, chortles and snickers when he rips one accidentally. They can’t stop laughing. And neither can I. They’re chips off my block, for sure.

So I've reevaluated. I figure now that we are the only real innocents left, the only true archangels with an undiluted sense of humor. We are probably normal, and everyone else is suppressing the desire to biff and whiff and laugh til the tears come streaming down. After all, if it weren't funny, who's been buying all those whoopee cushions all these years?