“Now class, it’s like math, you call it what it is.”
Whatever you call it, it is what it is: a fart.
Not long ago a father with a newborn asked me, a father of three children under the ages of eight, the correct terminology for when a baby, well, passes gas.
I thought about it. There must be dozens of alternatives, if not more. Botty burps, gas, pump, trump and wind. Then there are phrases like pass gas, cut the cheese, let off a bomb, drop a bomb, rip off a loud one or break wind or let it fly or let it rip. I could go on.
I wrote back and told him to try flatulence.
That’ll certainly get you an odd look when you tell your wife about your baby’s bad case of flatulence that day.
Yeah but, to tell you the truth, my kids go right for the real deal, like the other day when we were in the video store.
“Mum,” my six-year-old son said. “Somebody did a fart.”
Her younger sister, who is three, owned up to the stench: “I did a fart.”
I walked away.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Phhhhht.