Drive-Bys

Contagion posts a test that, by virtue of my gender, I would be doomed to fail.

I'm posting this for Jay, who frequently steers me to irresistable tests!
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As you probably know, I love, love, looooooooooove Dad Gone Mad. Today's post more than usual pegged me out on the laugh meter.

Why?

It brought back a funny memory of my sister -- someone I have very few fond or funny memories of at the moment. It was nice to be able to look back in laughter for a bit.

Farts always figured highly in my family's sense of humor.

For all that he was a pretty straightlaced business man, my dad was never above a "pull my finger" gag and he could really rip some barn-burners. His favorite time and place to fire off a Gatling gun burst was when he had us all trapped in the car for a Chicago to Cleveland or Chicago to Boston odyssey, preferably in the dead of winter so that we couldn't roll the windows down for relief. He was also the kind of guy who would (and did) fart in bed and then fluff the covers over my mother.

The Princess Mom, while ladylike in many, many ways has been known on occasion to launch an SBD of Fat Man and Little Boy proportions and then blandly insist it was not her -- it was the family dog.

Me? I got teased forever by my college roomies because I have a cast iron stomach and never seemed to end up with beer farts like the rest of my friends. (In fact, one roomie swore that I must sneak out of the house in a trench coat, Ray Bans, fedora hat, gloves and boots in the middle of the night to avoid being detected doing anything remotely indelicate.) Yes... my not farting was as much a source of humor as everyone else in the family's many and varied contributions to global warming.

My brother, on the other hand, brings creative flatulence to new and operatic heights of artistry. He has perfected the brief dry fart, the long wet fart, the fart that sneaks around the corner and taps you on the shoulder, the flaming fart (have Zippo, will light'em up), the controlled zipper fart, the Super Poot and more. Yes, my talented brother has provided hours of entertainment at parties and other gatherings with his amazing and talented gassy ass.

It was my sister, however, whose talents in quality and quantity of noxious emissions I came to appreciate most. We shared a bedroom for years, and I hated having to go to bed on time. I learned that if I could just get my sister laughing a bit, she'd release a little "whiffy". That would start the giggles, and the farts would rapidly escalate. Then I'd start giggling, and she'd be off the the races in gales of laughter and clouds of methane emissions. By the time we'd get to the point where she and I had tears rolling down our faces and sides that ached so much that we couldn't stand up straight, we would also have a room full of rotten egg-scented miasma so bad that it took at least a half an hour to clear, even with open windows.

My brother might be the life of the party, but my sister was one who made it possible for me to prolong my evenings well past the Princess Mom's proscribed bed time.

Yes. I do miss moments like that.