Romney is The Fart in This Story
So we'd finished reading The DaVinci Code. This was 2004. You remember the book. Dan Brown raised a question about the divinity of Jesus and through the plotting of the novel suggested that Jesus left behind a bloodline. And even though we knew this was fiction, the book made us stop and think for a moment about the idea that maybe Jesus had a wife, a kid, a house, and a patchwork of sod banded by a white picket fence and was actually living the American Dream in the sprawl somewhere outside of Houston.
The rest of the nation for a period of months wondered about this possibility and needed a lot of Today Show interviews and Op-Ed pieces in The Christian Science Monitor to sort it all out.Â
So me, Pete, Danielle, and Heather went to Northwest Bible Church to hear a panel of Dallas Theological Seminary experts refute the entire book. We had to go because Dan Brown claimed everything in the novel was based on fact. And like any good church function, there were plenty of generic refreshments provided. The four of us mulled around the lobby for a bit, eating cheese cubes from Albertson's and sipping small Dixie cups of flat Cola and making snarky comments about how seriously everyone was taking The DaVinci Code. Everyone there was white, most were wearing some form of Khaki, and everyone seemed a little embarrassed that the book had rattled them enough to attend a DaVinci Code lecture series.Â
After we had our fill of off-brand Oreo's, we filed into the sanctuary and sat in the back, where we could snicker and make eyes with each other as needed. Predictably enough, the Seminary Gladiators put holes in The DaVinci Code within the first few minutes and started getting granular, talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls and other writings from the same era that were left out of the Bible for one reason or another. The Seminary Gladiators were all wearing tweed, maybe in a nod to Dan Brown's author photo, maybe because tweed is always on sale. What they were saying was interesting and it all started to feel a little Indiana Jonesy, all that ancient fact checking that in the end produced a pretty solid time line of events. The conclusion: Jesus and his heirs weren’t living off I-45.
About ten minutes into the talk this sweet looking kid, maybe 10 or 11 years old, with a fistful of cheese cubes and a face streaked with some sort of chip residue, sat down next to Pete. When I say sat down next to Pete what I mean is: the kid wedged his stout little body between Pete and the six inches before the end of the pew so that he basically had one buttcheek on Pete's thigh and one cheek off. The kid looked at Pete and smiled real big, broadcasting a mouthful of cheese and saliva that had probably been decomposing in his mouth for five minutes or more and desperately needed to be swallowed. But Pete wasn’t a misanthrope so he didn’t move or glance at the kid in a "Guy?" get off of my thigh kind of look. But Pete did look at me with a "Guy?" look on his face and then down the row at Danielle and Heather with the same "Guy?" look. We were all looking at the kid and thinking "Guy?" and the kid was looking back at us like, "Hey, I'd give you some of this cheese if it weren't so good and if I weren’t running out."Â
At that point we were all starting to mouth-breathe with laughs because the kid was making fast friends with Pete, still sitting on Pete's thigh and eating dairy like it didn’t have to be rationed at all because there were still a couple trays of cheese in the lobby and probably some chips too. Another minute passed. More PowerPoint slides bloomed into focus on the giant screen at the front of the sanctuary.
Then the kid pointed at the stage and in an outside-voice declared, "That's my dad, that guy is my dad!" Pete, ever the camp counselor, whispered back at the kid, "That's cool." An elderly couple sitting in front of us glanced back in our direction with looks meant to scold us into silence and to non-verbally convey the following generic statement: "Can it, the Seminary Gladiator is getting to the meat and potatoes of this whole Dan-Brown-Jesus deal."Â
So we canned it. Then all of the sudden the kid lifted up the buttcheek that was on Pete's thigh and rattled out a come-to-Jesus-fart that seemed to vibrate every church pew in the sanctuary. It was a heroic fart that had to tickle Pete because the initial shockwave bounced off of Pete's thigh before perfuming the entire sanctuary. And the best part, aside from Pete getting farted on and the sheer thunder-like quality of The Fart, is that this kid didn’t even seem to notice he’d just passed gas. He simply lowered his buttcheek down so that it was once again resting somewhat warmly on Pete's thigh. In went a couple more cheese cubes into the kids' mouth and he was feeling like a million bucks.Â
In the seconds immediately following The Fart we were holding in our laughter and trying to expel any smelly air by breathing heavily out of our nostrils, pushing the air out with incredible force. Anyone who has smelled an adolescent dairy fart knows the gravity of the situation we were in. Pete was tearing up by this point and trying to pinch the bridge of his nose to somehow contain his laughter. His face was red and he couldn’t breathe, and the kid was still sitting on Pete’s thigh. At first none of us could look at the kid but then gradually each of us glanced at him and the kid had no clue he had just disrupted his dad's presentation with A Nuke. If the kid had had an assistant the assistant at this point would have brought him more cheese.
Pete couldn’t believe he’d just been farted on. Neither could any of us, and our laughter started to grow louder and people all around the sanctuary started to look back at us and then the people nearest to us, who were scowling, started to crinkle their noses at The Fart and its amazing dairy quality. Some people were even sniffing at the air in an investigative manner as if this very smell should be bottled and studied for its pungency.Â
I looked at Pete and his cheeks were streaked with tears and he was looking at me like "Guy?" and I was looking at him like "Guy?" and we knew this was a story we’d tell for the rest of our lives. The kid was still sitting on Pete's thigh, finishing up his remaining cheese cubes, and down front, the kid's dad was tearing Dan Brown a new one.
