At the airport, having a pre-flight dinner with [my spouse]. Big old dude and his wife come in and sit at the next table. They're having a rather loud disagreement. Dude: "I don't see what difference it makes. I'm either gonna fart on the plane or fart here. Might as well fart here and try to get it over with." And he did. A lot.
This is an interesting premise on Big Old Dude's part, and one with which I'm forced to agree.
Everyone knows that airports and airplanes are ground zero for anonymous farting. One of my uncles has a dubious theory that being up in the air does something to the human GI tract that actually makes people fart more.
As revolting and unappetizing as it is to sit down in a restaurant and be subjected to someone else's prolific flatulence, it might be even worse to experience it in a closed tin can at 30,000 feet from which there is no escape and also food being served. We have ALL sat behind THAT person. So I am kind of on Big Old Dude's side with this one.
But it all got me thinking about other fart and crap courtesies that may or may not be taken in one's everyday life.
For instance: When I was on jury doody duty last week, it seriously cramped my morning shit-game. Like, I was forced to do my civic doody duty during prime poop hours, and weekday work pooping, as we all know, is a Mission Impossible-type stealth operation (minus Tom Cruise, usually).
My personal strategy is so top-secret, in fact, that I refuse to divulge exactly where and when I go about executing this daily sortie. What do you think this is, a fucking dinner at Mar-a-Lago? You think I'm just gonna blast that sort of deep intel all over the internet? It will take a data dump from Wikileaks and Julian Ass-ange to get to the bottom of that sewer (all puns intended).
Anyway, the jury doody duty room had two bathrooms in close proximity to each other and to the room itself, and there was no privacy or ability to shit in there without drawing undue attention to oneself. None of us wanted to recreate 12 Angry Men, so I suspect most people were rather uncomfortable. If I ever get a survey from the court system about it, I'll recommend that judges give jurors a special instruction that they are free to roam the building looking for a decently private shitter lest gastrointestinal discomfort drive them to distraction and an inability to deliberate on the serious matters at hand.
The only scenario worse than this is the toilet in Isaac's Montessori preschool. There is a toilet bowl IN the classroom for toddlers and little kids who are potty training, and not a whole lot of privacy there, as you might imagine. In fact, I think the kids are only allowed to use it for pee-practice. Poo practice (so I'm told) happens in a sturdier and more private bathroom elsewhere in the building.
This, however, does not stop me from spending every parent-teacher conference staring at that toilet bowl while sitting on a tiny chair, listening to Isaac's teacher tell me about his facility with the binomial cube, the pink tower, "pickle work," and other peculiarities of the Montessori "work cycle." It's always about the time when she starts describing Isaac's "abiding sense of curiosity" that I begin to think about what would happen if I used that toilet.
What would happen, I think to myself as my eyes lock in on it, if I just excused myself to take a crap on this toilet right in the middle of this conference? I mean, after all, it is a toilet and it is RIGHT there, three feet away from us in plain view. I could just be like, "can I take this comments sheet with me? Go ahead, keep talking," and just kind of drop a deuce while the teacher told me about Isaac's fine motor skills.
These are the sorts of things that clog up my mind, and as hard as I try to flush them out, they just sort of circle lazily around in there, never really going down.
SAD.
