The setting is Disneyland, “The Happiest Place on Earth,” where I had joined a couple of friends for a day of fun and adventure. After paying something approaching $30 each to get in, we wanted to conserve what little was left of our cash for important things like rubber lizards and the air hockey tables, so when it came time to eat we opted for a quick-n-cheap lunch rather than fine dining in one of their numerous restaurants.
Lunch consisted of one of those burritos in a plastic bag, and a can of cola. I could go into great detail here, but why bother. You know precisely what I’m getting at here: INTESTINAL GAS!
Funny thing is, lunch didn’t seem to give me any problem. I don’t think I flatulated once the whole afternoon. More junk food was consumed. Many violent games of air hockey were played. Little did I know what my bowels had in store.
So late in the afternoon we step in line for the Jungle Cruise ride (you’ll also find rubber lizards for sale in this area). The lines at Disneyland are densely packed in a serpentine configuration such that it’s pretty much impossible to bail out from the middle. As I shuffle around a bend deep into the line, I notice there’s a little girl right behind me who it would seem has been genetically engineered to be just the height that would place her nose precisely in line for problems.
“Wouldn’t it be funny,” I think to myself, “if I had to flatulate right now?”
We continue shuffling through the densely-packed line, and just as we come to the exact center of the line, with the small, innocent child mere inches away and at least 20 feet of human bodies in all directions and nowhere to run, I did just that. I passed gas.
However, this was no ordinary flatus. Nothing like this has crept from my bowels before or since. This was … The Doomsday Fart! You know the expression, “silent but deadly”? You couldn’t have heard this one with a stethoscope, but Landsat 4 probably picked it up in the thermal band. It was simply unholy. A fart that could melt diamond. The oil fires of Kuwait couldn’t hold a candle to this thing. Chernobyl? Child’s play! Weather patters were disrupted. LAX was “fogged in.” The world knew a new evil on this day. A voluminous, hot, humid, painfully burning fart that makes the greenhose effect look like a pleasant alternative. It probably knocked down a couple local trailer parks just for good measure.
I farted only once on this day, but it was more than most people will manage in a lifetime. The line started moving. I did not look back, for fear that I might see a live action replay of the scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” where people were melting and shriveling up (or would it be more like the ash bodies in Terminator 2?). We go around one of the bends in the line, headed back toward The Mushroom Cloud.
My friends both choke, look back at me, and give the best glabe they can manage with their eyes watering like that. I’ve just got this big grin on my face. They do not need to ask where “It” came from (brave souls, these folks – they still joined me on the submarine ride later). Rounding the corner myself, I get a glimpse of what’s left of the small child behind me.
Her face is scrunched in pain, her hands violently waving the air in front of her. I don’t think she needs to ask either. Except for the complete depilatation, it’s nothing a good plastic surgeon can’t fix.
That evening, we ate dinner in a restaurant.