Steely Dad

That is the question.

Perhaps someone else has written about this topic but I wouldn’t know; I don’t read much. I realize this might be a bit high-brow for many a Steely Dad reader but it’s important to expand one’s mind and horizons. After all, Steely Dad is nothing if not a place of culture and refinement.

Case in point.

This evening after consuming two massive triangles of a mushroom/black olive/spinach stuffed pizza that I personally garnished with sautéed pancetta and several whole cloves of RAW garlic, the following thoughts suddenly occurred to me when my digestive tract started to sound like an overactive aquarium: With whom is it appropriate to expel flatus? How long before you do so, say, in front of your significant other? Is it ever OK to blow butt breath in front of your kids and, if so, what words do you use to describe the expulsion of gas? Most of all, is it appropriate to laugh when someone rips a stinky poop cloud in your general direction?

These are all very important and legitimate ponderings and I would like to get to the bottom of one of life’s great mysteries: To fart or not to fart?

Passing gas has been a part of our common human heritage since the dawn of man and it’s been a source of comic “relief” ever since a caveman farted on his buddy and thought the entire episode worthy of a cave painting. In fact, Aristotle and Plato were known to have engaged in rather noisy debate about this very topic.

But what is the proper protocol for farting in various situations?

I’d like to do my part and conduct a poll of the Steely Dad Nation. It is highly scientific, of course. Please be sure to leave your answers in the comment section. Your participation is much appreciated and will help to construct a veritable guide on the etiquette of the fart.

Before we begin, I have a hypothesis about farting in front of others that I’d like to share with you. Through your responses, I will be able to prove or disprove my theory.

I believe there is a direct and irrefutable correlation between the appropriateness of farting in front of a certain person and the time either knowing and/or spending with that person. For example, you presumably spend a significant amount of time with your SO. Therefore, it is appropriate to fart in front of him or her. You probably don’t spend a large portion of your time with, say, your insurance agent therefore it is NOT appropriate to fart in front of him or her.

Let us proceed, shall we?

1. Do you fart in front of your significant other? (If your answer is “YES” please proceed to question #2. If your answer is “NO” please kindly go fuck yourself because we all know you’re, quite literally, full of shit!)

2. If so, how long before you actually expelled ass gas in front of your significant other (SO)?

3. Who was the first one to break the smell barrier: you or your SO?

4. Do you and your SO fart in front of your kids?

5. Even if you do fart in front of your kids, do you think it is appropriate to do so?

6. If so, what word or phrase do you use to describe the act of expelling flatus (i.e. fart, gas, cutting the cheese, etc.)?

7. Who has the more noxious/pungent farts: men or women?

8. Is it acceptable to laugh if a member of the family rips a really good one?

9. Do you and your family members participate in farting contests that test such things as the smell, duration and frequency of the farting episode? If so, who holds the record?

10. When girls get together, do they fart out loud and do they laugh about it? Guys never do this that’s why we’re so curious.

11. Has anyone in your family successfully attempted the “Blue Flame”? If so, who?

12. I’m a stay-at-home dad (SAHD) which provides me a lot of time with my kids. As such, I have developed an odd Darwinian olfactory adaptation that enables me to distinguish the farts of my daughter from those of my son by nothing more than their distinctive aromas. Does the parent who spends a majority of the time with your kids possess this same ability?

13. Are there specific situations in which it is permissible to fart in public? If your answer is “NO” would you reconsider your position if there was no way the fart could be linked to you? I’ve heard of a specialized technique called “dusting the crops.” It’s employed by people in certain industries, such as flight attendants, who sometimes have no choice but to expel their ass pollution on a crowded plane (another reason I hate to fly). It works by walking briskly down the aisle while simultaneously letting the noisome air escape. When done successfully, it is virtually impossible to identify the offender leaving everyone on the plane to speculate and guess. You will notice that many times people will pull their shirt up over their mouth and nose as a signal that they were not the offending party that floated the air biscuit. It’s diabolical if you think about it.

The results will be carefully tallied and reported in a future posting.

And stay-at-home dads are from a plant in a galaxy far, far away…

NOTE: I’ve switched back to the standard font.  It was too much of a pain in the arse with the other one.  If you can’t read it, get some glasses!

Being a stay-at-home dad (SAHD) has provided me a unique opportunity to study and annotate the differences between how my wife and I parent and how we conduct our lives in general.   Here’s the product of my empirical research.  I made a list, really for my kids when they get older, but let me know if it’s the same way in your crib.  We may not always share the same technique but the goal is absolute: to raise happy children who eventually become happy adults.

Here goes:

Mommy researches

Daddy recites the research that Mommy conducts

Mommy works

Daddy gets worked like a rented mule

Mommy cooks

Daddy grills

Mommy freaks out when someone gets hurt

Daddy says to rub some dirt on it

Mommy drinks wine

Daddy drinks whatever he can get his shakey hands on (sterno if necessary)

Mommy’s rules apply

Daddy’s rules are rejected like a conservative bill trying to make its way through Congress

Mommy can’t figure out how to work the remote control

Daddy uses the remote like an extra apendage

Mommy screams and shouts

Daddy gives “the look”

Mommy is loved

Daddy is considered “the help”

Mommy wants to protect you

Daddy wants to teach you how to protect yourself

Mommy engages the question “why?” and does her best to answer it

Daddy pretends not to hear the question that’s asked of him no less than 1,000 times per day

Mommy takes five hours to get out of the house

Daddy take five minutes

Mommy reads books on modern parenting methods

Daddy takes a trial-and-error approach

Mommy buys organic food

Daddy feeds you the organic food Mommy buys because he has no other choice

Mommy carries five diaper bags

Daddy carries what fits into his pockets

Mommy wants you to learn

Daddy wants to teach you

Mommy is bossy

Daddy is diplomatic

Mommy watches Court TV

Daddy has the dog test his morning breakfast

Mommy loves online shopping

Daddy loves onlines adult entertainment that is sophisticated and tasteful

Mommy buys toys for the kids

Daddy assembles (and plays with) them

Mommy loves you

Daddy loves you more  :)

Ever watch the Discovery Channel show, I Shouldn’t Be Alive? It’s a program that reenacts real-life survival situations of average people (unlike survivor specialists Survivorman and Man v Wild). It’s compelling TV and I for one give it the Steely Dad thumbs up.

The producers of that show should do an episode on my recent survival experience.

No, I wasn’t caught in an avalanche subsisting only on pee-laden snow and no, I wasn’t stranded on the African plains surviving on elephant dung while fending off attacks from lions with a spear fashioned from the elastic band of my underwear and a filed-down button. No, my friends, this experience was much more harrowing than the aforementioned scenarios.

My survival experience involved four days of long treks, screaming kids, rude people, crappy food and massive crowds at The Happiest Place on Earth, otherwise known as Disneyland.

If you’ve ever been to Disneyland then you know precisely the survivor skills required to get out alive (and without having to file bankruptcy upon your return to civilization). One must be able to tolerate the searing pain of having countless strollers, some of them double-wides, rolled over your minimally-protected feet. One must be able to stand for long periods of time with antsy kids in lines that seem miles long. One must be able to stomach super-fried edibles without getting a violent case of the squirts that rivals Giardia. To be sure, one must be able to take being knocked and pushed around by large swarms of humanity without going postal. In addition, and this is perhaps the most crucial Disneyland survival skill, one must be able to distract the kids long enough to avoid spending huge sums of cash in the kid-appealing souvenir shops one will encounter immediately exiting each and every ride and attraction. It is the most skilled survivor who can do this without triggering an all-out flailing episode.

In addition to these skills, my personal experience in Disneyland required a skill, nay, an adaptation that most Steely Dad readers will find they already possess. For me, a supremely brave man who has always stared death and danger directly in the eye, I have to enter into an ecstatic trance in order to get my butt on…roller coasters. Anyone who knows me knows this about me. Roller coasters are my kryptonite, my Achilles Heel, my sole lapse in an otherwise armor-like aura. My phobia of roller coasters is the culmination of two traumatic events in my life. The first I attribute to a prenatal trauma when “Mom the Daredevil” went on a ride during my fragile gestational period that resulted in my mom hurling chunks. This incident occurred during the 70s, before they had signs warning pregnant women that going on coasters was a stupid idea. In fact, my mom’s experience set a precedent requiring all amusement parks to post the pregnant woman warning signs. The other trauma happened when my parents took me to a local fair run by a family of gypsies. You know the type where the operator of the ride has a patch over one eye and lacks any evidence that his mouth once housed teeth. Well, the ride I was on broke down and it caused a minor panic in the parents and a major one in me.

I could go on describing the depth of my phobia but it would require time better spent on other endeavors, like wrapping up this blog post. The point is, I’m deathly afraid of roller coasters. However, my three-year-old son (as well as my one-year-old daughter, who went on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride) LOVES roller coasters. Ever since I took him on this wimpy ride at Legoland when he was two, he has been addicted to rides. Well, I must say that after four days at Disneyland not only was I able to control my fear of Disney’s relatively tame coasters I actually began to enjoy them. With Steely Son, we hit up Thunder Mountain (his personal favorite) about 20 times, Space Mountain four times and a few rides on the famous Matterhorn. So how’d I do it? How did I adopt this unique survival skill? Bottom line: I had to Dad up and be there for my boy. That’s what dads do.

Am I ready for the panic-inducing rides at places like Six Flags? Not a chance. What will I do when he’s ready for those rides? I’ll do what any other courageous dad would do: have his mommy take him.