the Change I Wish to See

Is… is it TMI Thursday?  Well, yes.  Yes, it is.

So let me give you the business..

You’ve come to know my body as a heat-packing district.  It’s true.  I am armed with a wanton and gratuitous appetite.

But since we* love extended synonyms here at the Change I Wish to See, for the purposes of this post, when I say “Little Shop of Horrors” –

– you say, “f.B’s body.”  Ready?  OK!

So I’m chillin’ out, maxin’, relaxin’ all — wait; wrong story.

Scratch that.

It’s early Wednesday afternoon.  I’m on my 3rd day at a new job, in a room with three other people (hooray collaborative work projects!), sitting at a desk that would’ve been much cooler if it looked like the plane-wing-desk below.**

The critical mistake I made that day?  Walking in the front door expecting to over-achieve.  That led to me thinking I could just keep pushing off lunch until later, like a late lunch meant more productivity rather than a reckless disregard for the super-enforced ordinances of a heat-packing district.

But the rules at the Little Shop of Horrors are not meant to be broken.  Above all?  You guessed it: please the monster (my stomach).

I’ve broken this cardinal rule before.  It hasn’t ever ended well.  I’ve broken it right before meetings, before really small classes, at plays… basically situations in which you can hear any bodily function anyone makes (including loud blinking and being alive).

How can I explain what breaking this rule is to you… hmm

I’ve got it!

Food is like water.  And what happens when water meets heat?  Right: steam.  And if you let it get hot enough, without release, it will bubble and boil.

Through trial and error, I have learned that when my, er, uh, “little teapot” feels the need to, uh, release some steam, I have three choices: 1) let it squeal, 2) eat something and thereby distract it, or 3) do neither, and confront a horrible case of the bubbles by locking the steam in.

Sometimes this only sounds like my stomach growling (which often hungry it so often does).  Other times, when I gamble, I lose and it sounds like, well, like it did this day.  It went a little something like this:

Now, this was in a relatively small room.  And there are three other people within ten feet of me.  Three people who are then convinced that the apocalypse is now.

I froze.  I sat.  I waited.  No one said anything.  I went back to work.

It didn’t smell (because it was more of a backfire than a butt blast — it was an anti-fart), and the only tread mark it left was on my sense of professionalism.  But those three coworkers don’t know that.  They probably told their friends at happy hour, and will be telling their kids when they have them, about the loudest fart they’ve ever heard by a living being that wasn’t a nervous elephant at a Six Flags safari.

So, hi, readers.  My name is “f.B.”  And I blow T-Rex decibel anti-farts at work.

Happy Thursday.

—–

*”We?”  It sounds good but suggests at least one more personality than I actually have.

**Wing of a plane?  Know what there was a plane in?  LOST!  Love that show.