Discussion Thread: Sneeze Farts

For my birthday, my friend Ari surprised me with my first ever manicure. It was a lovely treat to have some hand-pampering, since typing the equivalent of a novel every week does a number on my hands.

Anyway! When we arrived at the salon, the woman who was going to do our manicures was deep in a serious conversation with an older woman on whom she was currently working. I wasn't trying to overhear them, but it's a small space, and I caught a snippet of their conversation: "It's hard to move past that kind of trauma."

Ari and I chit-chatted while we waited, trying not to be too silly. A few minutes later, it had gone quiet, and then the older woman sneezed. "Bless you," Ari said. The woman turned and smiled. "Thank you." A beat passed, and then Ari added, "And if you farted when you sneezed, don't worry about it. We're all friends here." Everyone burst into laughter. Classic Ari. Everyone shared stories of sneeze-farting, starting with the older woman who had sneezed. Her face was a giant grin. "There are no men here, right?" she asked, before launching into her favorite dirty joke.

A bunch of strangers, brought together by laughter over the common human experience of a sneeze so powerful it makes you fart. I just love that.

The most amazing sneeze fart I ever had was not longer after I started my first job out of college. I was the receptionist in an office in downtown Chicago, and the reception area was this stark, minimalist, marble-floored cavern. A messenger had just dropped off a package, and I was walking through the reception area when I was suddenly overcome by the urge to sneeze, which was accompanied by a powerful trumpet of a fart. The two sounds reverberated through the echoing reception area, and when I turned to make sure the messenger had departed, I found him instead hovering inside the front door of the office, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Upon eye contact, he turned and scampered out the door, as if I might aim the next round at him.

You?