Sometimes, I'm Afraid To Go To Sleep

Okay, so as anyone who has been married for any significant period of time will tell you, there are things that you won't really know about your spouse until you've been together for a while. As time goes on, these elements present themselves, and if you are observant, you will discover aspects of this person that you never would have guessed, some that defy explanation and are, shall we say, unnatural. I have made just such an observation, and at great personal risk, I will share it with you now.

In the past fourteen plus years, I have never, and I mean never, been present when my lovely wife has farted. Not once. Not a squeak. Not a slip. Not even an SBD. Nothing.

This isn't normal. According to the Internet (which means it absolutely has to be true), the average person takes the barking spider for a walk between seven and fourteen times a day, totaling around a half-liter of gas expelled daily. Given the low end of that spectrum, that's somewhere around 35,770 air biscuits that have either been floated undetected or somehow stifled entirely (and I didn't think I would ever put that math minor to use).

Now coming from someone with my background, at first I saw this as an unnecessary amount of self control. I just figured that a Herculean clenching was preventing any kind of slip until I was well outside of the blast range, at which point she was free to sound the trumpets. I didn't know why she bothered, but didn't think much about it (this was obviously a long time ago, before I was so far into my husband training).

As time went on, however, I had to rethink this hypothesis. There was no uncomfortable shifting in the seat, no sudden need to check on something in the next room. Most telling, there was no residual funk in her car, which I naturally figured must be bearing the brunt of those pent up poots, as the car is the only place outside of the bathroom where a person is truly alone.

So, given that they weren't being deferred, I had to repostulate how this could be. Perhaps she had been in an accident as a child that she didn't want to talk about, leaving her with some sort of hidden axillary exhaust port that the rest of us lack. Maybe she knew of a herbal elixir that prevented that particular wind from breaking (although given the volume of complaints at the time, one would think such a remedy would be shared). Maybe she was a robot.

Well, time has revealed naught on this particular mystery. To this very day not one duck has been tread upon, and for the life of me I don't understand. Not that I long to sit in someone else's vapors - I get enough of that from the crop dusters at Meijer. No, my concern is far more personal, and far more serious than that. So I say to you now, gentle reader, that should I pass away suddenly in the night, should you stand over my coffin and wonder why the mortician failed to remove that strange look from my face, that look of combined horror, disgust, and a stifled giggle, you'll know that I had done something wrong, and have faced a punishment far worse than any before me.

Cause of death: asphyxiation by a dutch oven fourteen years in the making.