A couple of 4th grade boys

Note to reader: ***this might be my most juvenile and random post to date, that's my disclaimer. You've been warned.  This is not theological or reverent.  So, if that's what you're hoping for, I'd stop now.

In seminary, a friend of mine shared that on one of the first nights dating her (now) husband, she farted, loud and obvious, and he just took it in stride and they all laughed it off.  Her advice was always to find a man who you could fart in front of. 

I was not of the same mind.  I could follow the logic, but was never one to fart in front of folks...regardless of who they are.  Well then R entered the scene and my logic was only cemented.  There was no (semi) public farting.  Period.  It just didn't happen. 

Then a few months back, I'm not sure what possessed me or how it started, but I began encouraging him to just let it out.  Really, I don't know what prompted it, but I would cajole and encourage and tell him it was totally ok.  And my memory doesn't serve here either, but one of us let one rip and it was ok, not totally permissible, but ok.  No one died.  (Neither from odor nor from embarrassment) but it was still a slow road to acceptability.

And then a few weeks (or months) later we both became like 4th grade boys and now it's no-holds-barred around here.  Mind you this is when it's just the two of us, not when others are around, but we laud one another for a particularly odiferous toot or for one that is noisier than most.  We cheer and laugh and give props.  It's really comical. 

I work with lots of older and elderly folks who fart without qualms and it's always a bit odd that they are so free in their flatulence and I am sure there will come a day when neither R nor I is amused any longer, but for now we just laugh.  We also have those moments when the smell is so potent that we wish we had never begun this journey of flatulential (that's my word!) freedom. I'm not sure I'll ever forget the night we went shopping and he was on one aisle and I on another and I walked around the corner and was stopped dead in my tracks and could only proclaim, "Whoa, was that you?" Or when I returned the favor and failed to warn him as he approached me in a different store in a different aisle after a particularly gnarly wind. 

R's a bit more dramatic than I am and he says that was one that made your eyes water and ears bleed....I say it wasn't that bad.  But I was laughing too hard to actually inhale and smell it. 

There are other days when we are shooed out of rooms because the smell is unbearable and yet, despite the watery eyes and bleeding ears, we still just laugh....hysterically.

So begins our life-long journey of married life.