Blowing a dangerous raspberry!

The super story of the day is of the American Airlines flight which had to make an emergency landing at Nashville Airport after the smell of sulphur burning was detected in the cabin. It transpired that a woman passenger, embarrassed because she had 'broken wind', tried to hide the ensuing smell by frantically lighting matches - presumably, in her distress, forgetting that smoking is banned on flights these days.

How awful that must have been for her and it made me think of the social stigma we attach to the perfectly natural act of farting and the lengths to which people, particularly women, are driven to avoid the embarrassment of such things.

There is an apocryphal tale of the young lady who, full of nerves before a big date, realises that her stomach is full of gas just as her boyfriend rings the doorbell. Unable to remedy the situation before her mother has let the boy in she resolves to hold on desperately until he ushers her into the passenger seat then, with perfect timing as he slams the door, let fly with a ripper and thus ease the problem. She thinks, inside the darkened car, that her plan has worked perfectly until her boyfriend gets in and draws her attention to the two friends sitting in the back seat!

Such stories are legion and it makes one wonder whether, in this modern era of social graces we may not be doing ourselves some gastro intestinal damage by worrying too much about about this sort of thing. Maybe we would be better going back to the days when wind at both ends was the sign of a healthy exhaust and to hell with what the neighbours thought!