Never Trust a Fart
(in part, a cautionary tale for those under 30)

As each of us travels the path of life, we all have innumerable encounters with circumstances, situations, terms, phrases, definitions, and references (et al) that aren’t always clear (although most often they yield their mystery to a good guess) at the outset.  Two of those that appear high on my personal list of experiential mysteries have in recent years (by coincidence ) finally been revealed, thanks to what I can only presume are the ineluctable effects of the aging process. For you see, although I just entered the upper half of my 60^th decade of life, I am convinced that the two following insights detailed below would never have occurred to me naturally (that is, without benefit of consultation with wiser others), were I about 30 years younger. In fairness, I should toss out the caveat that if any of you are in the least squeamish about the dreary and inevitably unhappy ‘in your face’ liabilities of aging, you should stop reading this entry here and skip immediately to observational notes on the quality of life penned by someone in their 20s (likely with a smartphone surgically attached to their auditory and visual sensory systems).

But let me explain. In the delightful movie ‘The Bucket List’ (starring Jack Nicholson & Morgan Freeman), Jack Nicholson’s character (an aging and very wealthy CEO named Edward Cole) turns to Thomas (his personal valet) with some pithy advice: “Here's something to remember when you're older, Thomas - never pass up a bathroom, never waste a hard-on, and never trust a fart.”  Huh?! 

As a healthy, fit person who still sees a much younger man looking back at him in he mirror each morning, I admit I was a bit puzzled by this. ‘Never pass up a bathroom’?  That was relatively easy, since gastric problems and illness can occasionally cause difficult-to-control symptoms such as diarrhea, medical conditions that tend to become a bit more recurrent as one ages. ‘Never waste a hard-on’?  I never worried much about trying to understand that one, since it’s pretty clear that Rosie Palme and her five sisters can sometimes be a whole lot more fun to be with than an aging, postmenopausal woman who could carve out a whole new career for herself making commercials for Bayer Aspirin.  But ‘Never trust a fart’?  That was a bit difficult to comprehend.

Why exactly should one ‘never trust a fart‘, I wondered, since farting is one of the lesser acclaimed but most immensely fulfilling blessings bestowed upon humankind by an unknown god to amuse and entertain ourselves and our fellows with. Consequently, it took me a while longer to figure this last admonishment out and I’m almost certain that those under the age of 30 might still find it problematic, as well.

The second ‘mysterious’ phrase visited upon me (a good number of years ago, too) occurred in the course of reading through John Steinbeck’s memorable tale of life in the California coastal town of Monterey, in the depression-era years leading up to the Second World War (‘Cannery Row’). In that wonderful book (one of my all-time favorites, not least because I spent many happy years as a youth surfing along that nostalgic stretch of central California coastline but also due to an infatuation with Steinbeck’s no-nonsense writing style) Doc Ricketts (the pseudo-bohemian marine biologist who is the central character) is taking care of his elderly father, whose personal hygiene needs he is forced to closely attend to. In that narrative, Ricketts, who has to lift his father in and out of his bed (to use a wheelchair), casually refers to his father as ‘Old Jingle Bollocks’ several times, if I recall correctly.

Well, the term ‘bollocks’ wasn’t in my vocabulary at the time, as it is a distinctly British slang term I only later came to learn meant testicles (the UK equivalent of our word ‘balls’), but I again applied my powers of reasoning to the matter and finally made the leap of assumptive intuition that Rickett’s father must have had a scrotum that dangled considerably downwards from his groin, hence the ‘jingle’ and ‘bollocks’ reference.

But why exactly was this the case I wondered, since based on observations of my own anatomy and that of relatively youthful peers, there wasn’t all that much ‘dangle factor’ to take note of in our casual locker room interactions.  Men have testes in a scrotum, of course, but most of the time the male scrotum seems to have an affinity for hiding, more often whenever it’s cold (such as it was in that 53 degree F. Central California Coast surf we longboarders used to spend so much time in). As most know, whenever it gets significantly cold, ole ‘One-Eyed Riley’ and his buddies tend to want to get closer to the body’s core warmth, not farther away from it. Thus, Steinbeck’s reference to Rickett’s father’s ‘jingle bollocks’ remained a semi-impenetrable mystery that eluded my deductive understanding. OK. Cut to the present and my recent investiture into the early stages of geezerhood.

The fact is that when one is younger, overall muscle tone of the body is generally fairly well preserved and although almost everyone has heard some medical authority or another warn of the liabilities of failing to adequately exercise one’s various muscle groups (this ‘Elektra’ style pronouncement usually occurs regularly every evening on broadcast media commercials paid for by the AARP or the pharmas), most of those under the age of 40 or so aren’t really too much concerned with that alarmist admonishment.  The majority of us keep on getting moderate exercise (though eating perhaps more than we should), but on the whole making at least some modest effort to maintain muscular tone.

In my case, I still run two+ miles daily, ride a bicycle to and from work each day (averaging 18-22 mph), and maintain a modest workout on a Bowflex Extreme X2 torture device at home before dinner. That regimen, plus eating a healthy diet (due to wifie’s near-obsessive-compulsive preoccupation with proper nutrition), has helped me to sustain a state of health & fitness more appropriate to someone in his 30s. Or so I have smugly reflected, until fairly recently.

One thing I hadn’t anticipated while basking in self-congratulatory reflections was the fact that a life spent out under the sun (surfing as a youth and years baking at poolside under the hot Saudi Sun as an expatriate) would ultimately succeed in virtually destroying most of the collagen in my skin (the human epidermis is, after all, the human body’s LARGEST organ). In practical terms, that means that no matter how fit you are, regardless of how perfectly trim your muscles are, you are STILL going to look like a sag-city reject at a certain advanced stage in life. In my case, I look at all those saggy creases and wrinkles that mark my personal map with the perfect 100% acuity of hindsight and WISH I’d taken more care to retain the natural chalky hue of my Celtic ancestry, instead of trying to emulate my brown-skinned bruddahs in Hawaii. Too late, of course, but seemingly further proof that youth is inherently blinded by its own unique beauty and singularly narcissistic splendor. Of course it also doesn't help that youth tend to think (up to about age 40. at least) that they will live forever.

But returning to the two ‘unknowns’ (‘old jingle bollocks’ and ‘never trust a fart’), the full dawning of my awareness as to what they referred to, exactly, has also finally settled in on me (albeit a bit late). Taking a look in the mirror yesterday, I noticed, to my mild horror that I could now likely pass for ‘old jingle bollocks’ myself! In fact, I’ve noticed that ‘the boys’ exhibit a tendency to want to stray farther down towards my knees than I can ever having recalled previously. They even occasionally become problematic when I wear my cargo-shorts ‘Saudi style’ (that is, without underwear), since there’s nothing more irritating than the discomfort caused by sitting on one private parts awkwardly or suffering ‘orchitic squeeze effect’ on a hot summer day, while seated. This is a problem not usually encountered when wearing ‘whitey-tighties’(or ‘Y-fronts’, as they are known Down Under), but trying to wear cargo-shorts without the benefit of a fabric corral to tether the boys closer to their home pasture becomes an exercise in mild frustration once one enters the rarified stratosphere of one’s 6^th decade of life on this planet. Sad but true, folks, although perhaps that is a justification for increased use of hipster briefs (‘Budgie-smugglers’ in Oz'ese) as one ages, since what’s more gross?...the sight of fat, elderly men with sagging bellies wearing Speedos or the (in my opinion the far worse) spectacle of fat, older men wearing baggy shorts with a dangling fleshy appendage peeking out from under the hem of one leg? Yuk!

The reason for this ‘elongation of the scrotal sac’ nuance that elderly men frequently experience is again directly related to loss of overall elasticity of the epidermal skin (even if it hasn’t been near-destroyed by over-exposure to the sun, a situational circumstance not common to the groins of either gender…unless you’re a nudist!) that is characteristically linked to increased age. [Trust me on this; I know what I’m talking about, sadly enough.] But so much for John Steinbeck’s ‘Old jingle bollocks’, and onwards, then, to the matter of why older people should never, ever trust a fart (I know you’re all dying to learn about this one).

In keeping with my core thesis here, that of the gradual deterioration of skin and muscular tone consequent to age, the same sorry fact also helps explain why Jack Nicholson’s character Ed Cole advises his servant to never trust a fart. In point of fact, the human anal sphincter is a muscle and one of the most important to be found anywhere in the human body. Its function is a critical one and mechanically quite crucial to the maintenance of normal, everyday ‘regulatory’ GI routines. Under normal circumstances the usual job of this strong ring of annular muscle is to govern the efficient passage of effluent on its way out of the body’s lower colon. Given the fact that it is comprised of highly enervated and exquisitely sensitive tissue (probably accounting for the tactile delight of anal intercourse enjoyed by some of the more deviant population…and we won’t dwell on that further, thank you very much), it enables its host to exert a fairly precise range of control over what exits that aperture, whether solid or gaseous in substance.  In the case of a younger person’s body, within which most muscles are still relatively well toned, the passage of gaseous aspects of the digestive process typically provides something of a delightful ‘music’ that may be played with the élan and finesse of an orchestral musician. Most men would never admit this in mixed company, but it’s a fact that men think farts are funny (as contrasted to women, who feel farts are a potentially embarrassing aberration of etiquette). For those who regard the fastidious observance of etiquette that demands one try to restrain one’s self from farting in public at all costs as pure aesthetic idiocy, however, the joys of pooting noisily on a whim are plentiful and delightfully amusing.

Many members of the male gender are known to take great delight in grossing out their wimmenfolk with prodigiously Herculean displays of virtuoso farting and in fact, back in the late 1800s, there was even a famous Parisian stage performer who was renowned throughout Europe as a master of performance farting (‘Le Petomane’, otherwise known as Joseph Pujol the ‘Fartiste’ or ‘flatuliste’, who could literally play classical music by skillfully modulating this part of his body through precise muscular control). It is important to note here that such incongruously gifted individuals as Pujol were all young men, blessed with superb physical fitness and superb muscle tone throughout their bodies. It warrants further stating that 19^th century Parisians were not half as prudish or Victorian as are modern God-fearing, American-style, conservative Christians.

Alas! As with all muscles of the human body (even those we try to keep fit through prescribed exercise), the human anal sphincter over time gradually loses its tone, also. As many find out to their dismay, tootling out a tune on the old Ass Alto isn’t quite as easy as it used to be in younger days. In fact, when you’ve hit the point ‘Bucket List’ character Ed Cole has reached, it’s almost impossible for your ass to differentiate between something of a more solid nature and a mischevous burst of Hydrogen and Methane just bursting with impetuous eagerness to escape in a fine blast of odoriferous noise. While the highly complex nerve endings of the human anal sphincter still retain a remarkable degree of tactile sensitivity in old age, the same simply isn’t true of the equally specialized muscle tissue those nerves are imbedded in. The result is that what would at one time have been merely a wickedly entertaining (if puerile) poot becomes what we medical people call a ‘shart’. I don’t think I need to delve further into exactly what a shart is, as I’m sure you understand the term’s allusion.

Therefore, the happy days of being able to trust one of the body’s most intimate parts to differentiate between its aesthetically entertaining potentials and its purely functional duties invariably come to screeching halt as one’s years increase, and one may therefore truly no longer safely ‘trust a fart’ (to be merely a fart,and not a dreaded shart).

All of these revelations may seem, on the surface of things, to be FAR more information than anyone would ever want to know about something our prissy, post-Puritan society still views as unmentionable prurience of the most tasteless sort, but believe me, Bunkie, it may seem like behavioral observation of an alien lifeform to you now, but wait until you’ve hit your AARP seniority! I have a feeling that at that time somewhere in some small dark corner of what’s left of your greatly diminished frontal lobe (not to mention your poor old Hippocampus, that by then likely resembles Swiss Cheese) will vaguely pop up a recollection of these words, provoking rueful reflection on the fact that we’re all headed in that general direction, like it or not. One other thing to remember might be that sometimes certain fleeting fragments of wise insight and formerly fragmented understanding ONLY come together with aging. In my opinion, these enhanced retroactive illuminations certainly are excellent examples of why us 60ish ‘geezers-in-training’ should be given a lot more respect than we presently get from today’s smartphone afflicted youth, since we know things they DON’T..!

If still in doubt as to the veracity of the above philosophical meanderings, trust me when I say that I too was once a callow youth who didn’t have to worry about trusting farts, wasting woodies and passing up the nearest convenience appliance on the way to somewhere.