The Significance of Lighting Farts

It's not that I can't hear, it's that I hear too much.  That constant buzzing noise, phantom cicadas.  Is that a car, a plane, the ceiling fan?  I can't say.

And it's not that I have nothing to write about.  I have too much to write about.  The life-changing rays of enlightenment that shine like a 100 watt, unshaded bulb in my mind when I should be sleeping, just bounce around like numbered ping pong balls, waiting for their chance to be memorialized in a blog. So, of course, it's difficult to focus on just one thing

Which leads me to the significance of fart lighting.

I am so happy that our spaghetti group didn't burn down Jacque's parents' new house.  I'm sorry that Julie's jeans were singed.  They were groovy jeans.  But dang!  Every time I remember it, I laugh until tears roll down my cheeks.  We were such nerds.  We were a bunch of teenaged girls whose worst sins included getting together on weekend nights for a sleepover and spaghetti and lighting farts. It's just amazing how much methane a 100 pound girl can muster, when she's adequately challenged.

Yeah, okay, so we lived on a tiny island in a sea of corn and bean fields.  There wasn't all that much to do.  We stayed busy, though.  We'd pile in Honey, my '66 Ford, turn up the Philco and hope to catch some Carole King as we did the lake, the strip, the square, the college, the lake, the strip, the square, the college. We could tell by head or tail lights who was coming or going and we could guess where.
The lake, the square, the strip, the college. . . . .

We'd go bushwhacking to see whom we might catch parking.  Even when we dated, we ended up together somehow.  Jacque and Jerry would ride in the back of Dan's bean truck.  Well, that's sort of a date, right?  Riding around?  And pre-bucket seats and consoles, you could tell how serious a relationship had become by if the girl sat right next to her boy as he drove around the lake, the square, the strip, the college.

Burlings had a rubber raft and sometimes we'd schlepp that out to the lake and paddle around.  The town had a softball league and I sometimes would climb up into the box and announce the game, even though I didn't have a clue what was actually happening.  Once - I swear to you this actually happened - Carol and Nichols and I were all drinking Pepsis and blew into our bottles and made a perfect chord!

It was 1972 and there was just so very, very much to do.  And if we got bored, we could always light a fart.