Bulletproof

While I wait in rapt anticipation for the day I can breathe through my schnozola again without sounding like a dying whale, I can’t help but notice summer seems to be having a preview in the ‘hood. 70 degrees, buds on the trees, blinding flashes of luminescent, clammy, wobbly white flesh abundant on somewhat incredulous passing humans.

Winter is long in the northern states. Long, dark and cold. But now, where there was a multitude of never ending dark evenings, during which one did little more than sit on the couch eating cookies and feeling one’s pattoot expand outwards into a jelly cushion of flesh that could block out the sun at its lowest point in the sky, now it’s getting dark later and the sun’s out to warm your skin and you can walk to the parking lot without even thinking about a coat, an unattractive ear flap hat, a big, fuck-off pair of boots or saying a bad, bad blasphemous word. 

Now I only say those words when confronted with a lack of cheese or Diet Pepsi in the fridge, or an over-zealous Jehova’s Witness at the door, trying to save my soul.

I know right? Like I have a soul.

Anyway, I just came on to share a quick anecdote about how, when standing in line in the supermarket last week, this old lady with a walking cane shuffled past me, en route to the Depends aisle, or tuna aisle or wherever else single, mobility-challenged, polyester-slack-wearing octogenarians go in these places that are too sad to contemplate fully.

Just as I was starting to feel all depressed about this unfortunate lady and my brain is concocting a tear-jerking back story about her living alone with her seven cats, a hole in the roof and a fridge full of TV Dinners for one, she managed to turn my impending sadness into pure, unadulterated joy, by ripping a gigantic, resounding fart. Right there in the middle of the store. Yes, this frail looking, sweet old lady, just fired a colossal fanny-bullet (that’s “fanny” in the American sense, you Brits, don’t get excited) and kept on walking like nothing happened. Like she hadn’t even noticed that thunderous, vibrating behemoth exiting her back yard like a charging elephant.

SWEET! I was slack-jawed with amazement and delight and desperate to share it with my fellow man. I glanced around furtively, looking at other shoppers hoping to catch someone else who’d noticed, someone to snicker with and wink knowingly at, but not a single person was acknowledging the gargantuan butt-freight-train that had just blasted through town and was working its way down aisle five.

Some people have no sense of humour. But me, I smirked to myself the whole way through checkout and again when I passed the same lady in the parking lot, no doubt still crop-dusting the area with the fragrant remains of prune juice and green beans.

It’s the one thing I’m looking forward to about being 80. Emitting bodily eruptions as often and as publicly as possible and being not at all apologetic for it. Because when you’re 80, you’re bulletproof. You’ve earned it, baby. I mean everything else is going south, you might as well have a good time where you can, right? In fact, when I’M 80, I plan on deviously dishing out my bottom biscuits strategically, in areas likely to cause the most offense or hilarity.

Yes. I’m already planning my deviousness ahead.