Post Traumatic Fart Disorder

PTFD: a psychological condition in which you are haunted by farts from your past.

Perhaps you are one of the lucky ones. Perhaps you've never experienced a fart so intense that it sticks with you, not for thirty seconds, but for years. Or maybe you're one of the unlucky ones like me who, for whatever reason, couldn't process an olfactory signal of such magnitude that it remained with you throughout time and space.

It was the summer of 1989 and I was in line at a Blockbuster waiting to check out with a friend of mine when I let the worst fart ever.

Innocently enough I let a small pocket of air escape my backside. We've all had those private moments in public and often escaped unscathed. Not this day. To call it silent but deadly would be to minimize its impact. Such a hackneyed expression makes this fart sounds like your garden-variety smelly fart. But this fart was so much more. Yes, it was silent, for which I was relieved. At least for a moment. A few seconds later my friend looked at me with an expression of such disgust that I can still picture her face: her lips forming a grim line and her eyes narrowing. She didn't speak a word, but in my mind I clearly heard her voice say "I have lost respect for you as a person." She looked at me and walked away. She left me there, rightfully so, to fend for myself, helpless against the onslaught. That's when the smell hit me. If it had been a wine, the label would have read "sharp notes of sulfur layered over ripe tones of dead squirrel. This full-bodied powerhouse has a robust bouquet and slow finish. Infused with hints of shame." It stuck to me the entire time I was in line.

I couldn't tell you what kind of cake I had for my birthday that year, but I can tell you what that fart tasted like. The stench permeated my nasal cavity so completely that it penetrated the back of my mouth. If you put Edvard Munch's painting The Scream into a darkened room covered with dirt and dust and cobwebs and added the sound of children crying, that is what my fart tasted like. In a word: Despair.

To this day I still flashback to that moment. I can see my friend's face in my mind and I feel the back of my tongue swell as I try to fight off the memory. I idly wonder if it scarred my friend in the same way, but not enough to open a dialogue across the miles and years and say "remember that fart I let in Blockbuster that one time?"

I can't explain why my subconscious mind will pull this from the far reaches of my brain every so often. I can't explain why nearly 25 years later I am still ambushed by memories of that fateful day in 1989, my personal day of infamy. I can only hope that one day I will be able to put that living hell to rest, to recall memories of cake and ice cream and puppies and rainbows. For now I must simply move forward one day at a time and watch my back.