Dear Dr. Rex: I was in a library and this guy at the next computer let out this enormous fart. I mean the library shook. I don’t know what he thought but the 30 or 40 people in the library just stared and started to move away as fast as possible. It was horrendous. It was like mustard gas they used on troops in world war 1!! It smelled like he was rotting internally. And all he could do was laugh like a complete fool. God help that poor man.-sandefur

Dear Dr. Rex:I was in a pubic library when I read one of your jokes. I laughed so hard that i ripped a mother fart. The whole room was silent. Then fifty people were pointing at me and stairing and laughing. Thanks, butt no thanks.- Paymann

Gentle Readers: As you know, we normally only include one letter per week in this forum, but I think you can understand why I decided to make an exception in this case. These 2 letters arrived within a day or so of each other. I am assuming that these letters are describing the same incident from 2 different points of view (i.e. the farter and the farted). If that assumption is correct, several things become immediately obvious.

First of all, at least one of these guys can’t count. Next, we realize the strength of the bond that farts can create among individuals. How many people will hear the story about the guy who ripped a huge fart in the library??? Out of the 30, 40, or 50 people in attendance, how many of them will tell one person? How many will tell more than one, perhaps telling the story to a room full of astonished associates at a party, a wake, or even on the floor of the Senate. Maybe the President will hear this story, maybe the Pope. Maybe you will hear it in a couple of weeks, perhaps from an individual so caught up in the excitement that he will even claim to have been there even though he was really thousands of miles away, in another library, where most of the farts sucked!!!! I think I took Sociology once and I think this phenomenon is called something. You can look it up….the point is that word of this huge fart will spread to hundreds, maybe thousands of people-maybe some guy will even post the story on the internet on a web site that gets thousands of visitors every day!!!!

Instead of being embarrassed, our flatulent friend should realize that while he brought tears to the eyes of dozens, he will bring smiles to the faces of thousands. That is no small task. And when your grandchildren beg you to tell the story of the monster fart in the library again, after you have already told it to them what seems like a million times, you will remember the fart lesson learned here today. I believe it was Winston Churchill who once said:

“Dude, although the smell of a truly vicious fart seems to linger forever, it is but a fleeting instant compared to the permanent brain damage it may cause.”