{"id":4534,"date":"2024-06-21T20:57:24","date_gmt":"2024-06-21T20:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/writers-house-review\/?page_id=4534"},"modified":"2025-01-29T18:03:12","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T18:03:12","slug":"in-defense-of-the-toot","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/writers-house-review\/vol-5-winter-2024-2025\/in-defense-of-the-toot\/","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of the Toot"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Ely Ingling<\/em><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Everyone farts. Yes, even women. You know your grandpa farts; the smells that waft away from that man would make anyone wonder if he needs to change his shorts. Flatulence is natural! The body needs to expel this air somehow! There are two main causes: one is a slow build-up of air that comes from eating and drinking, and the second is gas created by bacteria digesting what is in the stomach. It doesn\u2019t sound as gross now that it\u2019s been explained, right? The wonders of the human body never cease to amaze. It\u2019s also very important to know your own body\u2019s typical farts, since a change in them could indicate a health issue that warrants speaking to your physician.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The best thing about farts, though, is the sheer number of ways they can be weaponized for comedy. First, there are so many names for it: passing gas, breaking wind, tooting, cutting the cheese, letting one rip, the bottom burp, silent-but-deadly, pushing fudge into the seat, the one-cheek squeak, the Hershey squirts, and my personal favorite, those damn barking spiders.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are also games you can play with them, sometimes with unsuspecting people. For years, my aunt would trail people in stores, press her hands up to her lips, make the <\/span>loudest<\/span><\/i> fart noise you\u2019d ever heard, and disappear from view before the people could turn around to see her. Trust me, family wasn\u2019t exempt from this, either. There have been many times when her own father got so scared by the noise she made that he would, you guessed it, actually fart in surprise. Cue the entire family in stitches from laughing so hard.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Recently, too, my aunts and dad have started a new game: guess the fart. When someone gets that rumbly feeling down in their gut, the precursor to a good bottom burp, they loudly declare, \u201cGuess the fart!\u201d and everyone in the room has to share their impression of what they think the fart will sound like. Then, when the fart is finally ripped, whoever had the closest guess gets a round of applause. It starts all over when the next person feels the build-up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Flatulence is also a wonderful form of torture upon those closest to you. Haven\u2019t you ever been in a car, felt it coming, and locked the windows before letting loose so your compatriots suffer the agony of it with you? Or maybe you\u2019ve broken wind despite knowing someone\u2019s behind you, effectively crop-dusting them. Once, my dad crop-dusted a mother and her young son. He said nothing about his silent-but-deadly. When the woman finally caught a whiff, her face scrunched up in disgust and she asked her kid, in the middle of the grocery store, \u201cDid you just <\/span>shit yourself<\/span><\/i>?\u201d Dad could hardly share the story through his laughter.<\/span><\/p>\n

The human body can be gross. That\u2019s just nature. Turn that disgust into something that can be laughed at, and you won\u2019t feel self-conscious about passing gas in front of another person again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Ely Ingling<\/strong>, SAS ’24, is a linguistics major and creative writing minor from Columbus, NJ. Language has been a passion of theirs since they were a young child, and they hope to\u00a0publish more of their work one day.<\/p>\n

Ely wrote this piece in a course taught by Paul Blaney, who selected this piece for inclusion in WHR<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ely Ingling   Everyone farts. Yes, even women. 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