Beanz Meanz Fartz

Terrible wind today. Not outside—me.

Personally.

Yes, I have awful gas. It makes me entirely unsociable. One wonders what was eaten to inspire this outrushing of foul vapours.

“Ye Gods! That is dreadful, man!”

“Great Scott! I can nearly taste that—go outside and shake yourself!”

“Oh, that is ghastly! What on Earth have you been eating?”

I don't know. Really, I do not know.

We have all been through it. We have all had those blushingly embarrassing times when you wish the ground would open up and swallow you whole.

But we all do it.

All of us.

Women say that they do not do this, that they can control it. This is false.

Women, like men, are human beings and they also pass wind.

‘Passing wind’ is the nice way to say it, of course.

And yet it is a joke. We hear that someone is about as useful as a ‘fart in a thunderstorm’ or ‘as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit’.

The word ‘fart’ becomes immediately jocular; it precedes or embraces, all the humorous aspect of flatulence.

There is nothing remotely funny about ‘flatulence’ but mention ‘fart’ and people will, usually, smile.

It is because it is so socially awkward that it becomes humorous in the third party telling in the form of a joke or a piece of gossip.

How juicy is it when we hear that someone ‘let one rip’ at a classy function?

Squeaky ones, rumbling ones and those ‘silent but deadly’ ones. We are familiar with them all.

We all do it. We all pass wind and yet it is impolite to talk about it other than between friends and then, often, in jest.

We know about the person in the lift (elevator) who lets one go and then looks disdainfully at someone else to divert attention away from himself.

We like jokes along the lines of:

Posh lady at the table farts.

She looks up smartly and says to the butler, “James! Stop that at once!”

The butler instantly replies, “Certainly, Ma’am. Which way did it go?”

We can, nearly all of us, recite one joke or another about the dog that gets blamed.

We all know about the butler rushing into his Lordship, who is sitting in the bath, with a hot water bottle.

His Lordship says, “I did not ask for a hot water bottle.”

The butler responds with, “But I distinctly heard you say, ‘What about a water bottle, Buttle’!”
(You have to speak that last line as if you are bubbling through water, of course.)

Yes, we all have flatulence from time to time.

It is the subject of humour until it is encountered ‘in the flesh’, as it were.

Even women suffer from it. Or, more correctly, even we suffer from women having it!

The scientists who study such things—really? Those scientists tell us that everyone farts, on average, fourteen times a day. Well, in the last hour…

Pass the beans, please, my dear.