What is it about a fart that just reduces boys into quivering, convulsing mounds of raucous laughter? I mean, I’m a guy so I absolutely get why a fart in and of itself is funny. I’m not completely stupid. But the amount of joy that a poot can bring to a young boy is immeasurable.
Girls don’t see the humor.
My kids, they’re all fart ninjas. It’s like their sole function in life is to either produce gas or to point it out and die from the absurdity of it all. We took them on a Christmas vacation to Gatlinburg Tennessee this past year and our 13 year old, Jesse, tried to kill us with chemical warfare the entire time. And the other two, well, they alternated between asphyxiation by way of methane and asphyxiation by way of laughter.
Myself and their mother, however, failed to see too much humor in being shut up tight in a Dodge Durango, in freezing temperatures and having to endure the most eye-watering, throat closing, noxious gas ever created by a living creature. Seriously, dogs eating Hormel chili don’t smell this bad. I am truly of the opinion that something crawled up inside my son, died and then something else crawled in there, ate the first dead thing and died as a result of it. Either that, or he’s got some Dark Side force gas that shouldn’t be possible in nature.
You see, when it’s near freezing outside we typically try to keep the heat running the car and the windows up to preserve the heat that we have. As one would typically do in such conditions. Normally, it works out just as you would expect it to.
However, on this particular trek into the Smoky Mountains, we wound up with a visit from the swampy ass of a pre-teen. He was truly in rare form. And it seemed that just as soon as one violent attack on our olfactory senses would dissipate, he’d unleash another round of carpet bombs, designed solely to test our wills.
It’s doubtful this would have helped in the least.
Finally, after trying in vain to suffer through it in silence and disgust, we relented and put down the windows. If you’ve never been to Gatlinburg, there is a two-lane road that runs through the town and sidewalks crammed with tourists on either side. At best, you move at the blistering pace of 3 miles an hour. What I’m saying is, there wasn’t a lot of wind being generated to help remove the stench.
Welcome to the Smoky Moun…JEEEEZUS What’s that smell?
As we rolled down the windows, Aaron said through his shirt covered face, “We’re going to have to apologize to everyone on the sidewalk when that leaks out of here!”.
And that, friends, is the story of our Smoky Mountain Christmas vacation. Do you have anyone in your family that just lights up a room with the thickest, most despicable odors? How do you deal with it?
