The Fart

I was sitting on the plane to Brisbane the other day and after a half hour or so, a subtle, but distinctively nasty aroma began to pervade the air. I made no attempt to analyse the aroma and in face proceeded to actively not engage my olfactory senses.

Now I had been sitting for some time feeling a little less than comfortable, holding back on commencing any sort of chemical warfare within the confined space of the aeroplane’s fuselage.

And at that point I had to stop and think, because an opportunity had just been presented to me.

Someone else had fired off the first salvo. I couldn’t here anyone jumping up and down and claiming it as theirs and neither could I hear anyone complaining or see any sort of finger pointing that might give away the identity of the perpetrator.

And so the opportunity was thus:
I could fire off my own little salvo and hope that either my own effort would be stink free or that the previous attack would be sufficient to mask my own putrescence. This would leave me to wallow only in my own guilt (and possibly putrescence) but with no one the wiser.

But there was a danger to this opportunity. Because, like most people, I have upon occasion been known to release a seemingly innocent little vapour only to find that it mush have been birthed in the deepest, darkest, most evil swamp of mire and stink ever to have graced this sweet earth; and hence produce a stink with sufficient potency to turn the dead in their graves and send those who are yet to reach that state well on the way to achieving it.

I considered the protocol and ethics of the situation for large numbers of seconds. And then …

I held on.