I broke a cardinal rule of girldom. I not only experienced dual-purpose gaseousness, I enjoyed it. In fact, was once a pretty gassy girl. Somewhere between the ages of 1 and 32 I developed an unnatural propensity to release gas through both burping and farting. I know, I hate both of those words too, they just sound gross for some reason, but until someone comes up with better terms that do not make me sound like a five year-old, I'm going with the classics. What is really weird, is that I never used to have this issue in any way for the first 32 years of my life. I neither remember feeling the need to, nor thinking it was okay to do so, especially around other people or a date. I suppose a few times in my life, it did bubble forth, but I tamped it down with clenched butt cheeks or a complicated esophageal maneuver that stopped it in its tracks. The point is, no one ever had first hand experience with my bodily emissions.
I don't know what happened to change this, I just know that sometime before I met my husband I began to babble like a brook. This being a new experience for me the act became a new and interesting pastime. I was like a school child fascinated with my own gaseous abilities and with each new eruption I became even more amused. I tried to burp louder and longer, testing the limits of my newfound talent. Sadly, I never became accomplished enough in these pursuits to manipulate my gas in any productive way, such as burping the alphabet or singing the Star Spangled Banner.
I guess all people go through this phase, it’s just that for most people it happens around the age of eight. True, I tend to run late, so maybe this time I was just really, really late. Whatever the reason, it sort of happened and then I was either unable or unwilling to stop it. It’s not like I was blowing out the room when in public or anything, but when at home alone or with the man candy I was less than shy. My last boyfriend before the husband used to refer to me as his natural gas resource. Cute, huh?
Looking back now that I’m past it (thanks to more exercise and less dairy), what is most shocking to me is how firmly I believed that it was not okay to let myself go appearance wise, but that this was perfectly excusable. As if my gaining 20 pounds or not doing my hair was any worse than trying to start burping contests with the husband. I’m pretty sure he’d rather I just put my hair in a ponytail if it meant I’d stop stinking up the bedroom at night. At the very least, I think he could have dealt with it as a physical ailment, but since each new performance was accompanied by schoolchild-like giggling, it became a dead giveaway that this was simply a choice I was making.
In the months to follow I surprisingly tired of my own immaturity. This is surprising only because I have lots of other bad or slightly crazy habits that still seem totally fine to me. Referring to myself in the third person while talking out loud to myself for instance or using any phallic object to mime humping someone still holds a certain allure, but the natural release of bodily gases suddenly became tiresome. So I was a gassy bitch. Big deal. It shouldn’t make me any worse than your Dad who thought it was fine to sit in his chair in a pair of baggy jockey shorts farting with abandon while you sat not six feet away.
Thankfully, I’m not gassy anymore, which I’m sure the husband will be glad to hear before he gets back from that whole war thing. Hopefully, I’ll also be able to keep off those 20 pounds and find the time to do my hair to make his homecoming really special. Girls aren’t supposed to do any of the things I’m writing about, let alone talk about them. I guess maybe that’s why it was so freeing to actually let it out, so to speak. It wasn’t very ladylike, my Mother certainly would not have been proud, but it felt so rebellious! I got to be the ten year-old boy I’d always wanted to be and I’ve gotta tell you, it was pretty awesome.
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