There is actually a four letter f-word that the Fokker does not like to use. Shocking, I know, but very true. I abhor the f-word that is a commonly used description of passing gas. I’ve had a decades long squeamishness at the mere mention of human elimination function. I will say shit until the cows came home, but no way in hell would I ever admit to doing it. Like any Victorian maiden, I was determined that no one would ever know that I might possibly need the bathroom for anything other than baking my anus-free body and brushing my teeth.
Also like a Victorian maiden, I suffer from the vapors. Or, more aptly, the vapors of other people.
The f-word is one of the my daughters’ favorite words EVER. I have tried, with no success, to get them to switch over to my preferred euphemisms for breaking wind – poot/pootle/pootled. Instead of a discrete “excuse me” or a genteel “I pootled”, the Fokkerlings cry out “I FARTED” at the top of their lungs. My assurances that they do not need to share that information (because usually the sound and the fury has announced it for them), and my pleadings that they at least call it a pootle if they MUST say it, have fallen on deaf ears.
Even worse, when my girls cut the cheese they do so with a chainsaw. They have what can only be described as sonorous pootles … which come to think on it would be an awesome name for a polka band.
When my daughters pootle I have looked around for the spent shell casings of an Uzi firing, holes in the furniture, or the tell-tale signs of one of the dogs exploding. I have grave concerns about the staying power of the seats of their pants, but I am also afraid their skirts would billow unattractively if they wore them instead. I always have to check Spock’s diaper for payload, because of the timbre and seriousness of her pootles. I am nearly convinced she has special poo which spontaneously converts from a solid to a gas 9 times out of 10 when exposed to the lining of a diaper. The tenth time it can warp space time around it, it is that dense.
They get these skills from their father, who routinely shakes our bed off it’s frame with his nocturnal expulsions. It sounds like someone is popping popcorn in the depths of hell. It wakes me up, and then makes me cry a little in pity for the duvet. To top it off, his trumpeting acts as a clarion call to the dogs, who then start dropping silent but deadly wolf bait from the foot of the bed.
I’d invest in scented candles, but I really don’t think an open flame is what we need here in Methane Manner.
*sigh*
My mom actually washed my mouth out with Ivory soap for use of that “f” word!
I swear like a trucker, yet still get a weird feeling when I use it decades later!
It is amazing those petite flowers of yours are such barbarians…but little girls are a riot like that!
He eats the most nutritious food, but I am shocked at the magnitude a duration of step-grandson’s expulsions! How does a forty pound being fed nature’s bounty produce something so foul?
LOL
I also hate that word and the t-word for poopie. Early in our marriage, the dh mentioned that particular f-word and I coldly stated he was not to say that in my presence. That he can say fuck all the livelong day (except now that our daughter’s babbling I’ve had to kinda curb that for myself) but that one makes me cringe. We call them tootie-ta’s after the dr. jean song (which has zip to do with that function) and the poopie is pupusas after the spanish song la pupusera which is ironically about food.
Yesterday I opened the sp.’s closet to get something for her to wear to dh’s family home. PINK she shrieked. I stared at her. “Shit.” I said. ” YOu said pink.” Then I said “don’t say shit. mommy didn’t say shit. PINK SAY PINK” in a total panic heehee.
Oh, too funny. Around here it is ‘passing gas’, ‘polluting the atmosphere’, or if you absolutely must, ‘tooting’. And it ocassionally gets blamed on the dog.
That was so funny. I laughed several times. You poor dear. The f word doesn’t bother me but it was always a really easy way to get to my mom. Beware of letting them know how much you hate it. It could come back to haunt you.
Wow. You would have issues in my home. With 5 people with Celiac Disease and various other intestinal issues, farts are commonplace. My littlest likes to announce “I TOOTED!” or “FAAAAAART”.
If it makes you feel better, “fart” is one of the oldest words in English. Linguists can trace it, almost unchanged, to proto-Germanic (to fart = ‘fartzen’), and possibly proto-Indo-European.
I’m tardy this week, Luna, so forgive me. But I have a kid who ADORES the German language. (Past life situation, in my belief system.) However, we have NEVER heard that the origins are fartzen but I LOVE it! Partly because, like our beloved Fokker, I can’t stand the “f” word, and am like her, Victorian in my personal sensibilities, and have no anus at all.
Julie