Farting in Public

Like many people, the Smoots enjoy visiting our local Japanese Steak House from time to time.  It's a lot of fun to watch these guys prepare your food right in front of you, and it's even more entertaining given that you never know if your hair may accidentally be lit on fire, or perhaps you'll suffer a puncture wound to the heart as the chef tosses knives around.

The only bad thing about the Japanese Steak House is that approximately 20 minutes after I eat at one, I have the obligatory "bad episode."  If I'm in the car at the moment this strikes, it can be a very uncomfortable thing.  This is why I found myself at a nearby Barnes & Noble the other night, about 20 minutes after enjoying dinner at the Japanese Steak House.

If you read my blog regularly (as if I have been posting to it "regularly") you know that it's pretty hard to embarrass me.  I have been on stage in front of hundreds of people wearing only underwear on several occasions, for example.  But for whatever reason, I do find it embarrassing if I fart loudly enough for other people to hear me in a public bathroom.

I always make a serious effort to keep things quiet when I'm in a restroom stall if there are other people around.  I'll go through pretty extreme and uncomfortable processes to ensure that no one else hears what I'm up to, even though if you're going to make loud farting noises, this is actually the appropriate place to do so.

Well, I am sad to admit that my experience at Barnes & Noble was anything but silent, and I wish I could apologize to the poor guy who was in the next stall.  It wasn't pretty.

Worse yet, I had tried to wait it out so that he would be long gone before I left because I didn't want him to see me, thus connecting my face to the noises he heard.  But fate got in the way of that plan, too, as I found myself washing my hands next to him.  I have a feeling that he planned it that way because he was morbidly curious to see what I looked like.

Anyway, I'm going to try to be more discrete in the future, as best as possible.  I can tell you that I still have no real problem with farting in public in general; tomorrow's installment of the blog will be "Farting with the Stars."