All Aboard the Immaturity Express

I think there might be something wrong with me.  I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I cannot burp.  I’ve never been able to manage it and God knows, I have tried long and hard.  Because it is an awesome talent and it is goddamn hilarious.  

I maybe belch once a year if that and even then it’s so tiny and silent and so entirely surprising to me that I have to grab passing strangers by the arm urgently and go, “Did you hear that?  I totally burped right then and it tasted like Irn Bru!”,  then when I pick myself up off the ground and wipe the Mace out of my eyes, I am delighted with myself.  Because I never burp!  It’s a momentous occasion worthy of a national holiday.
 

I envy you burpers, I really do. I am jealous. I come from a family of excellent burpers.  Well, except for my mum, who is a lady and I’ve never heard an explosion of gas come out of either end of her, ever! I bet she doesn’t even poop.  I bet her digestive system turns all her food into rose water or something.

My grandma on my dad’s side, however, was possibly a world champion of burping, although I never saw a trophy or anything “official”. The woman was tall, sweet, cheerful, athletic and sprightly even in her older years, but she could belch like an overfed trucker in a vat of Pepsi.  And because she was old, she could belch with complete impunity.  People over 70 can do that you know.  They can burp or fart anytime they want and they don’t even have to acknowledge it or blame the dog.  They don’t need manners or etiquette anymore.  They’re all “Screw you guys, I’m 70, I have earned the right to expel noxious gases from my person anytime I want, just you try and stop me, paaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrp.” 

And it’s hilarious.  It is. It is the funniest thing ever in the history of funny things (except maybe that funny thing with The Hoff and the cheeseburger).

So we’d be sitting there at Christmas dinner, my whole family and grandparents and everything and in the middle of the trifle, my grandma would be producing this sound that I imagine wasn’t unlike the reaction you’d get if you stuck a tube into Michael Moore’s belly button and screamed the word “REPUBLICANS!” down it.  And of course the adults at the table would politely ignore this like it never even happened,  because grandma is old and she can’t help herself.  My grandma would be telling a story and there’d be a giant, five second mega-burp half way through a sentence and she’d continue like nothing happened. My jaw would hit the table with delight and only a warning glance from my mum would shut me up. And, as we kids learned, the response to this giant Tuba of a belch was not to rip a fart that sounded like someone had torn their pants, no matter how funny that is.  Grandma’s belching can be ignored, but we get sent to our rooms, that was how it went.

My sister inherited my grandma’s prowess in the belching arena.  She can belch entire sentences and I’d rupture things laughing at her.  My favourite thing was my sister’s ability to belch “YOU TALK BOLLOCKS!” on demand.  It was an art form.  Trust me on this.

She is also better at farting than I am and could produce the most obnoxiously stinky eggers you ever experienced, which, as we shared a room in our early years, wasn’t a great triumph in my opinion.  But she could also out-volume the stereo which was funny.  See how it goes? Loud = hilarious, stinky = not at all hilarious, unless I did it. 

A few years ago, while being evacuated from the Keys due to Hurricane Rita, she and I ended up in a beachfront hotel in Fort Myers, Florida, in the pouring rain with nothing to do but drink beer and eat pizza in our room.  Our typical conversations that week were a bit like this:

Her: Well it sucks that we didn’t get to stay in the Keys but you know what?

Me: What?

Her:  PTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHPPPPRP!

Me: DUDE….REALLY?

Her: Better out than in.

Me:  I guess at least we’re on the beach with a view and everything.  It could be worse.

Her: I know.  You know what would be a lot worse?

Me: What’s that?

Her: BBBBTHHHHHFFFFFPPPPPPPPPPPPP!  PPPPPPPRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP!

Me:  Jesus fuck.  Open a window!

Her: Hahaha.

Then to rub salt in the wound, she’d belch.  My peeps.  We be classy.