A Contribution to Toilet Humour Inside the Wendy House

I am being cajoled into contributing to my vulgar sister's Toilet Tuesday meme.

It isn't that I am prudish - quite the opposite - I have an uncanny knack of blurting out inappropriate comments, almost like my own brand of Tourettes syndrome. Unlike Lou at Bloggomy, I peed with the hotel bathroom door open on the first date with my husband-to-be, still in full conversation. However, I didn't break wind in front of him for quite some months. Perhaps there is my story.

The Etiquette of Farting

I do distinctly remember the moment that I unselfconsciously let rip for the first time  and I've never looked back.

As I had already known my future husband at University, meeting up again after some twenty years was strange. On the one hand there was a familiarity to him that was comforting and made me feel totally relaxed. But on the other hand, the boy I had known so well was now a man and there was something new there that had grown from age and experience. Something exciting. Something that stirred feelings in me that I didn't know I could have for him. It was an intoxicating mix of already connected yet so fresh and unknown.

I couldn't remember for the life of me how our relationship had been before as kids with regards to farting in each others' company. It puzzled me. I wracked my brain for answers. I dredged up old memories to find a scene to hang a hypothetical flatulent episode from. I couldn't do it.

Strangely, I had no problem saying that I couldn't remember what the etiquette was regarding communal farting but I did have a problem with the gaseous act itself. I simply could not do it. It didn't seem right to just do it if we had never been through that "first fart in front of each other" shared moment.

Months went by and I never once embarrassed myself in front of him although he had begun to let out tiny, controlled little expulsions closely followed by a scarily high pitched "excuse me" for a man of his size and gruff manliness.

It didn't happen until we were  on holiday together with all my kids and Wendy's family in a remote farmhouse in Wales.

We went walking. Without a map. We got horribly lost.

It is quite easy to look back at the Lost in the Wilderness adventure and see how it made us better, stronger and "more capable in a crisis" sort of people but at the time, it seemed like an endless ordeal. I think I came to the conclusion that if I was going to be lost forever in a desolate, peopleless landscape, the last thing I wanted to be doing was controllling my digestive gases. The moment had finally arrived. I announced my intent and followed through with a noisy rectal outburst.

The world didn't end.

Since our marriage, I have overcome the final farting taboo (as defined by my personal morality). I have farted in the bath with him and taken pleasure in  the bubbles!