Farts – They Were Funny When I was 9, and They’re Still Funny at 59

I’ll admit it; I had trouble coming up with something to write about tonight.

I was going through the list of blogging ideas I’ve accumulated over the past couple of years, and of them was titled:

“It’s Better Than the Sound of an Ambulance”

This was going to be a collection of phrases my mom had used over the years, and this particular one had always struck with me. My mom was driving my sisters and me somewhere, probably to swim practice, and she farted. When we all expressed our displeasure, her simple reply, in her lilting Irish brogue, was, “It’s Better Than the Sound of an Ambulance”. 

As you might imagine, there’s no good comeback to such a line, and it’s stuck with me for probably 50 years.

However, turning that one line into a blog about other off-the-wall things my Mom said seemed harder than I thought, until I looked at it from a different angle tonight.

I thought – why not a blog about farting.

I know, it’s not a topic you’ll ever see Seth Godin or Fred Wilson blogging about, but hey, that’s their problem. And who doesn’t like a good joke about farting.

The newest one I heard, just a couple of months ago, goes something like this.

When you see someone ordering an entree that comes with beans, be sure to tell the person ordering to make sure the entree comes with no more than 239 beans. When they ask why, you can reply, “One more would make it too farty (240).”

I remember my high school algebra teacher would start each day by either telling a joke, or asking if a student had a joke to tell. One day, a student volunteered the following joke: “What’s the disadvantage of wearing pantyhose?” “When you fart, you blow your shoes off.” It took the teacher several minutes to control his laughter.

When I was in grade school, “Confucius say” type jokes; one that I remember was “Confucius say he who eats jelly beans farts in technicolor.”

While doing my research for this blog, I typed “fart jokes” into Google, and there were over 6 million results. I clicked on the first one, and came across some of the following jokes:

Q: What do you call a person that doesn’t fart in public? A: a PRIVATE TUTOR.

Laugh and the world laughs with you; fart and they’ll stop laughing.

A boy comes home and says to his parents “Mom, dad, the teacher asked a question today and I was the only kid in the class that knew the answer!” And the parents say “That’s amazing son! What was the question?” And the boy says “Who farted?”

An elderly couple go to church one Sunday. Halfway through the service, the wife leans over and whispers in her husbands ear, “I’ve just let out a silent fart. What do you think I should do?” The husband replies, “Put a new battery in your hearing aid.”

And finally, I want to share one of my fondest memories, probably from about 10-15 years ago. A college friend was having a party, and early on at the party he showed me and another friend his newest toy, a fart machine. He let us try it out, and then he left it with us as he resumed his hosting duties.

My friend and I could not use our newest toy often enough. We would go up to a group of people who were having a conversation, strangers to us, and just walk behind them and set off the fart machine, running through all the various options. We of course thought it was the funniest thing in the world, and continued to think so for the next three hours. No one was immune from our immaturity, and I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard in my life.

For some reason, I don’t think we were invited back the following year.

Anyway, so if anyone has ever wondered, is there anything I won’t write about, this blog probably answers that question.

I hope you got a gas out of reading this…