When tooting brings people together

Disclaimer: If you are at all uncomfortable, annoyed or offended by talk of farts, toots, or "cutting the cheese", please discontinue reading now.

Today is Lowell and my 2nd Anniversary. The other day I was thinking about my favourite things about marriage, and you know what landed at the top of the list? Farting. Well, not just farting per se, but perhaps what it represents (I am about to get very deep here- about as deep as one can get using a fart analogy).

To me, farting represents complete openness, honesty, and transparency with each other. And not to mention extreme tolerance (and also a little fun). If we’re willing to share gross & potentially noisy and/or putrid air from our rears, then what WON’T we share? What could be worse than that? WHAT HAVE WE TO HIDE?!?!!

I remember the first time I blew it (tee hee) in front of Lowell. We were just young bucks then. It was the same year that this picture was taken...

After we had been dating for about a year, we were driving home from Wisconsin (where Lowell did his internship for new media). The Calgary Flames were in the Stanley Cup playoffs, so we stopped at sports pubs along the way in order to catch the games. (Side note: I can only assume that American sports pubs are VERY DIFFERENT from Canadian sports pubs during play-off time. There were 5 big screen TVS and NONE of them had the game on. The waitress had to ASK her manager what the Stanley Cup playoffs were (*GASP*) and whether they could put it on one of the TVs. Oh for shame). Anyhoo…

With very little energy left in my body, I slumped in the wooden seat to watch the game. In my uninhibited state, I accidentally let out an audible ‘squeeeeeaaaaak’. Lowell appeared surprised, looked at me with questioning eyes, and inquired softly, “Did you just toot?”

Only crickets could be heard for about 5 full seconds as the wheels were turning in my head and I was debating whether to lie and say it was the chair. I ended up admitting that the sound escaped from my derriere rather than the chair, and Lowell responded with, “aw, that was cute.”

Probably not a great move as he tooootally reinforced the behaviour and I've never looked back. It's been 5 years since that fateful incident, and we've unabashedly shared many toots since then. And I plan on sharing many many more in the years to come...