No Matter How You Cut It.....

Growing up as a kid, 'fart' was a bad word in my household. Or at least, it was considered vulgar -- the first f-word I learned that I was scolded for using. I guess some habits die hard. As an adult, I still don't like the word.

That begs the question, "so, what do you call it?"

As you can imagine, with two strapping young lads in the household, it is a common enough occurrence. It's the timeless giggle inducer -- the ultimate punchline. Dad gets in on the action sometimes too, I must admit (never the Mom, though. Girls never toot, right?).

The other day, I asked "who cut the cheese?" as the telltale remnants of a covert release reached my olfactory senses. I was stunned to learn that my kids had never heard the phrase and didn't know what it meant. This, then, led to a fun-filled discussion of all the ways we could express the act of 'tooting'.

There were many.

My mom used to call it 'windy', as in the wind blowing, I guess. She'd say "Whooo. Did you windy?" I never cared much for the weather allegory, though. It still makes my nose wrinkle to hear it (pun intended).

My nephew Josh asked me once, "Did you bluff?" I've always kinda liked this term. It's subtle, and clever. A common response to that one is "Nope. It's the real deal. I'm all in" (that there is poker talk, in case you want to act like you don't know).

My wife introduced me to the 'spider bark' term early in our marriage. In response to my question "what was that?", she said "It must've been a spider bark". Of course, if you'll refer back to the second paragraph of this post, you'll note that the Mom never toots. Therefore, in that particular instance (and many since) it must've really been a spider bark.

SBD stands for 'Silent But Deadly'. These are strictly banned at our house as all fun ends when these occur. The player must leave the room (and preferably the house) if one of these is imminent.

Anyway, maybe you don't talk about stuff like this in your household -- we may just be tacky and uncultured. Or, it may be because we don't have an indoor dog to blame it on.

So what term do you use?