Just as horror stories tend to be better when they illustrate some fundamental truth of human nature, just as the same is true of comedies and thrillers, the same is true of this true story from my past, involving one of the greatest farts in all of human history.
I am a hundred percent serious. This fart happened, it was every bit as epic as I have indicated, and its circumstances reveal a basic human truth.
It happened when two couples went out for dinner, which as was typical at the eatery I reference, was voluminous; and as it happened, the four of us stood around in the parking lot later, too engaged in conversation to part.
Then one of us, whose name I won’t mention except to assure you that it was not me — and I am not being falsely modest here, as I have been known for some highly prodigious farts in my life — let loose.
And I want you to know that this fart lasted a full two minutes.
How do I know that it lasted this long? Because we had time to talk about it.
We said, Jesus, will this fart ever end?
We said, I didn’t know a fart of this duration was even possible.
We changed subjects, but circled back to the fart, which was still ongoing. We noted when it changed tone and pitch, presuming by this point that it was almost depleted, but lived to observe that it simply changed pitch again thirty seconds later. I am telling you. It was a wonderment, and for two solid minutes we tracked its progress like NASA tracks a rocket’s trajectory.
And then it ended, and we went on with our lives.
Except for the next couple of years or so, whenever the four of us got together, there was always at least one reference to the great blow.
It became a subject of nostalgia.
One the producer expressed irritation at.
So it went unmentioned for years, and fine; except recently, with almost two decades past since the night in question, it suddenly came up again.
And I have to tell you that though memory remained green, for three of us, the guilty party professed no memory of the incident at all. We were making it up, surely. It never happened.
And we elected not to make an argument of it.
From whence we get the nugget of truth, an eternal epiphany about human relations, whether you happen to be talking about a fart, or conversations about a fart.
Sometimes you just have to let it go.
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