Stay Calm and Fart On

I know that you might not want to talk about this but the time has come in our relationship that we have to start to cover something important. The compelling, hard hitting issues need to be dealt with.

We have to talk about gas. Not Oil and Gas, not the Keystone Pipeline…nope farting.

Someone has to be the hero here. And that guy is gonna be me.

Why do we HAVE to talk about gas?

Why? Why? Because we all do it that’s why. Because it was one of the first things you ever did on this planet. You were caught by the doctor, took a deep breath, saw your Mom’s face and farted. And because when you where seven, you thought it was AWESOME. My philosophy is to regularly do things that you thought were awesome when you were seven.

Now, I don’t speak for all Celiacs but I have always been known as a Gassy Girl. If you know me for more than 37 seconds, I have most likely passed gas in front of you.  The Internet says that the average human farts about fourteen times a day. For me, you better double that. Whether I admit this or not has nothing to do with you. Most of the time, I don’t admit being the culprit of a stink bomb and neither do you so don’t get all righteous about it.

When I was a flight attendant, I called it “crop dusting”. I would walk from one end of the plane to the other, relieving my internal pressure the whole way, then, when I got the  front, I would turn around and watch every row look around in disgust at the poor saps behind them. It was like my own form of the wave… awesome.

I can only assume that my noisiness has to do with my Celiacs. That’s what I blame it on anyway. I used to blame it on my spawn but my husband decided to teach them to speak (which was a practice I thought was completely over rated) and now they don’t let me blame it on them. I have been standing in a store and Ethan has stopped, looked at me, taken a step away and said in a very loud voice, “don’t even THINK of blaming that  giant fart on me.” Then he starts to laugh, because farts are funny.

 

I can tell you that when I have been Glutened, the resulting flatulence is absolutely not fun at all. But for the rest of the time? I think it’s awesome. Seriously seriously fun times.

Case in point. We were camping with good friends of ours and I was cooking in our trailer. Our friend Scott came in to get something. He opens the fridge, stops and stares at me.

 

And while suppressing a gag he says,

            “You were just going to go ahead and pretend that never happened were you?” he says calmly. “No ‘excuse me’, no ‘ah gee Scott, don’t come into my trailer because it smells like shit’. Hey Laurie? That would be nice of you.”

 

            “I HAVE A DISEASE!” I screamed desperately, “I CAN’T HELP IT!”

 Scott began to laugh and went back out to give Trev massive amounts of pity. 

Recently, Trev and I have been doing a Cleanse. I used to think that Cleanses were for hippys and people who ate their own placenta but I have come to accept The Cleanse as a useful tool. After I get glutened, I tend to do a Cleanse, to clean the pipes so to speak. Now, I don’t do the Cleanses where you starve and drink only goat urine until you shit through the eye of a needle. Nope, not me. I do the ones that call for “cleaner eating” which is pretty much how I eat anyway so it’s just a couple more vitamins a day. No problem.

The problem is that somehow, Cleanses increase my gaseous nature and by “increase”, I mean, “I fart when I breathe”. Good fucking times. Have you seen those videos where those guys dress up like an old man and wander around Walmart with a fart machine grossing people out? Ya, that’s me, except I’m not dressed up.

The other day, Julia and I were in the toy section of Walmart when a Celiac poofty just snuck right out of my bum. It was loud. The lady beside me looked at me like I had just slaughtered a baby seal pup in her lap and stormed away shaking her head. Julia and I however, thought this was deeply entertaining and started laughing really hard, which made me fart more which made Julia laugh more and so on and so on until we just sat down in the middle of the aisle beside the Barbies until we could control ourselves and my sphincter. 

This is how I teach my daughter to act in public.

To her future husband, I say a hearty, ‘You are Welcome’.

 

There seems to be nothing that I can do about my Celiac gas. So I guess I am stuck with it. If you are a friend of mine, you are stuck with it too. Just try to stay up wind.

PS Gas-X is Gluten Free for those of you who don’t think this post was in any way enjoyable.