She Gave Birth To Me, She Has To Speak To Me. Right?

Oh. My mom is SO not going to like this post.

I woke up this morning with a zillion blog ideas bouncing around inside my head. Yesterday Facebook hijacked my brain. Today, I think THE CAT IN THE HAT has seized control.

NONE of those original blog ideas, however, involved our SEPTIC SYSTEM until the guy we hired to pump out ALL THREE tanks showed up around 9 o’clock and I’m thinking BONUS! THAT’S NOT SOMETHING YOU SEE EVERYDAY and WHO DOESN’T WANT TO SEE FIRST HAND WHAT’S COMING OUT OF THE JACKSON’S SEWER SYSTEM?

But then my friend Jocelyn begged me not to blog about that. And in spite of the fact that she hardly gave me the time of day time back in high school when she was a rockin’ senior with the big blonde hair and I was just a lowly sophomore growing out a bad Dorothy Hamill haircut …

Come to think of it NEVER MIND JOCELYN.

I WILL blog about my septic system.

Just not today.

So, here’s what happened.

Mistake #1: I got up and logged on to Facebook.

Mistake #2: I never logged off of Facebook.

Mistake #3: I got in the shower thinking about Facebook.

Mistake #4: A terrible repressed memory from high school surfaced in the shower and I shared it with my friend Jeff who emailed back with this: THAT’S A GREAT THING TO POST ON YOUR BLOG.

Caveat: Jeff lives in Missouri. Not in my shower.

So, here’s a warning, my gentle readers. If the word FART offends you … GO AWAY NOW.

With that said, may I remind you that yesterday I admitted how a MEME forced me to admit publicly that I am ANOSMIC. That is, I have no sense of smell. Never have.

Once again WIKIPEDIA comes to the rescue … you can read all about my kind here. In fact, you may want to go check this out ASAP as Wikipedia, the user edited online encyclopedia, may actually have ME listed under NOTABLE ANOSMIC INDIVIDUALS and I have absolutely NO IDEA who might have added my name to this distinguished list. I swear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anosmia

Generally the no smell thing has caused me very little interruption in living a largely fulfilling life but there have been some drawbacks. Like not knowing I was dragging my kids through the grocery store with hugely dirty diapers and enduring the glares and gags from my fellow shoppers. Rude.

Oh, and fully grasping the reality that FARTS STINK way too late in high school to prevent a humiliating dating experience that has scarred me for life. Or least scarred me for the last 4 hours since I remembered it in the shower.

Because a lot of my friends from high school read this blog, I’m going to call my date involved in this humiliating dating experience “Stuart” in order to protect his anonymity. Plus, maybe he’s forgotten.

I have this vague remembrance of “Stuart” being a pretty nice and pretty respectful guy. He was also a decent kisser who lived in this other worldly house up on the hill outside of town with a grand piano facing a wall of glass looking out over the skyline. Kinda like one of those smooth serial killer homes. But without the serial killing.

Because of the no smelling thing I have to admit for a long time I really believed the "gross-ness" of farts was largely due to the noise they make. Not the smell. I think I always knew, on some level, they had a distinctive smell but not necessarily a bad one. They were only gross in the sense that air had just exited your fanny and everyone knew it. Like little air craps.

So for years I was a big fan and master executioner of what I have come to understand as the SILENT BUT DEADLY fart. If I farted in a crowd and nobody heard it, then it didn't really exist and certainly no one could blame it on me.

EXISTENTIAL QUESTION FOR EVERYONE WHO IS WAY SMARTER THAN ME: If you fart in the woods and no one smells it will the trees still tip over?

Anyway, in smaller groups I always went to the ever reliable THOU WHO SMELT IT DEALT IT defense. Sometimes, just to throw people off, I even “smelled” it first.

But ... and here you will realize that I wasn't always rubbing two brain cells together ... it NEVER EVER occurred to me that if there were only two people in close proximity to each other and one of those people happened to be me and I farted silently BY DEFAULT THE OTHER PERSON WOULD KNOW THAT I HAD CUT THE CHEESE.

Until “Stuart” pointed this out to me one night when we were kissing in his white pickup truck and I cut one loose worthy of a long haul trucker eating pickled eggs.

No offense to pickled egg eating long haul truckers intended.

Sure, I denied it. But it was futile.

He knew.

I knew he knew.

And he knew I knew he knew.

I DEALT IT.

“Stuart” and I were certainly "serious" enough at that point to warrant a formal breakup but, honestly, I have no recollection of it and can't remember if all this took place BEFORE or AFTER he and another date had their pictures taken in my living room. Which was the photograph posted on Facebook that dredged up this horrible memory.

Either way, my guess is one of the reasons “Stuart” is smiling in that picture taken in my living room with another date is because he knows that other girl isn't going to gas him out of his own truck that night.

So, to everyone I went to grade school, junior high and high school with … IT WAS ME.

PROBABLY EVERY SINGLE TIME.

P.S. To my friend JEFF, you can expect a call from my mother any minute now.