The Strange Case of the Subway Fart

I end another work day and am feeling much better the I was during my last entry. There is something about a ferocious battle between man and beast that rearranges ones mood. No more lizards in the classroom today as it appears the message is out. Therein walks a Lizard Killer. All other lizards beware. No, today I received some excellent news. This month I will not have to run the Eliminator! I am being sent on a business trip for two days next week and thus another poor soul has to sub for me on my hardest day of the month. While I feel slightly sorry for this person I cannot help but be elated. You’d could offer to send me to the mundane Boise, Idaho every month (that one’s for you Mog) and I will gladly pay my own way so long as you eliminate the Eliminator. I was feeling good. I was walking on clouds. Wait, no I wasn’t. Sure felt that way, though. Aww, sick, who left this wet clumpy mattresses on the sidewalk! Those talking garbage trucks are never around when you need them.

I purchased my ticket, stepped onto the train bound for home and…ack! Oh my God, what was that smell? I had walked right into a wall of foul funk. Bam! I turned to lave but the doors to the train closed. I was trapped with the smell. Who could have produced such a terrible stink? I looked around me. Understandably the seats were empty, the only ones on the train, but three seats were being occupied. There sat a very pretty young woman and near her two sweet looking old ladies. Surly they were no the cause of what can only be described as the worst fart in the history of man! YUCKO! I figured I could brave this stench, however, the fool that I am, and I sat down in one of the empty seats. From the looks of it all but this area was packed. I held my nose. I nearly turned blue. Then a strange thing happened. The two pretty girls looked over at me, gave me a nasty look, stood up and walked into another train car. No…it couldn’t be. A man walked on the train once we stopped at the next station. He sat down next to me and instantly smelled the stink. He looked at me, squinted and produced a handkerchief to cover up his nose and mouth. Ack!

These people thought I was the one who slung the fart into the air! It was there when I got on….I swear! Oh, sure, blame the foreigner. I have to smell it too, you know! But I didn’t smell it…not anymore. It was obviously still there lingering about like pollution in LA, you could tell by the expressions on the faces of the people around me. Why couldn’t I smell it anymore? They say you can never be privy to your own filth because you become used to it. Well, hell, maybe it was me. I buried my nose into my chest and took a big whiff, probably looking more peculiar to the Japanese then I would if I had laid the stink. Was I wearing the Megan shirt today? Surly that thing is getting to be rather ripe to the nose? Nope. A nice clean shirt today. I smelled fine. No, it wasn’t me. The smell test vindicated me in my own eyes. Of course, the eyes of the people around me told a different story. I was a smelly ganjin bringing my country’s filth into their clean train car. Well, I can feel content in the fact that they probably thought I was American and thus their disparaging thoughts were towards a country not my own. Canadians don’t smell. This is a known fact, people! We may excrete the sweet smell of maple syrup from time to time but we are not this vile. Now, if I were from Detroit… I did what any sane man silently accused of laying a smelly fart in a train car would do. I cast doubt on the man sitting next to me. Slowly I curled up my nose even though I could not smell the stink anymore and gave this man a pure look of disgust (he did not see this). I slowly stood up and walked to another end of the train car sitting down in a recently freed up seat. Whomever laid the vile stench I will never know. Was it even fart at all? This is a mystery to me. All I knew was that now the eyes were cast away from me and directly at the old man in the corner of the train. I’d freed myself of disparaging thoughts. Unscrupulous, maybe, but all is fair in love and subway farts.