I’m not asking belligerently. I think they’re funny too, sometimes. But my daughter, age 2, just started laughing at her own farts, and I have to admit, I don’t get it. Why does she think this is funny? She doesn’t see TV with fart jokes. We don’t really laugh at farts in front of her. She only has two little kid friends, and I don’t recall farting ever coming up with them.
So why is she laughing? Of course, once she starts laughing, we start laughing at her laughing, and that reinforces it. But why did she laugh the first time? Is there some sort of Jungian Fart Joke Archetype? A Fart Meme? Why is farting funny? Is it universal to other cultures?
(IMHO? GD? GQ? MPSIMS? No frickin’ clue. Let’s start here and see where it goes.)
Just to comment on the other side of the issue: farts are not automatically funny to everyone. I suggest you visit an old folks home where farting is part of life. There may be a few of them laughing as fart after fart disturbs the silence, but I bet there’s a minimum of laughing.
Kids, yes. Old folks, not so much. Folks in between, some laugh and some don’t. There are websites devoted to fart sounds and fart stories and all things fart. To visit them is to set yourself into the mood to laugh. But they’re not representative of society in general, I would submit.
If there’s a lack of censorship in a home (or elsewhere) for people to let loose whenever the urge hits, there’s going to be less frivolity over the subject.
But get all uptight and try to suppress them, and they’ll get a big laugh whenever somebody “breaks the code.”
Farts are funny to me. They always have been and they always will be. I love fart jokes and I love the Farting Preacher. Of course, it has to work in context. A fart joke is like slapstick in that it’s silly and pointless and any chimp can pull it off.
Why? I haven’t got a clue. I guess I like chimp humor.
When my son was a toddler, he would be playing quietly on the floor by himself, and from across the room we’d hear him say “Excuse me” to no one in particular, and we would know that he had just farted. It was hilarious.
I love fart jokes and fart threads, but live farts are just a drag. Mr. K comes from a very free-farting family, where my family is not. This makes for a very unbalanced relationship. If I can manage to go 31 years without farting in front of him, you’d think he could make it through one episode of 24. Or a meal. Or the checkout counter. Or while I’m trying to make a Very Serious Point. Such is not the case. Sigh…
I’m trying to type but I’m laughing too much. My wife is very similar, she comes from a non-farting household, and I come from a pronounced Fartaholic household. However, she has let one go a few times where I have heard it and I must trake those rare opportunities to point them out and call her on it because she gets so coy and embarrased.
Kalhoun - now seriously, 31 years and nary a fart to be heard from you…Come on now!? No way!
Incidentally, I’ve mastered the cough fart conjunction…Anyone else>?
Yes. What a lifesaver.
As to toddler fart humor, it’s gotta be somewhat of a learned experience.
However…
I was thinking that maybe, along with the goofy sound, it feels funny?
[QUOTE=WhyNot]
I’m not asking belligerently. I think they’re funny too, sometimes. But my daughter, age 2, just started laughing at her own farts, and I have to admit, I don’t get it. <snipped>QUOTE]
At that age, my kids (all of them) did the same thing. They’d let one go and laugh uproariously, which in turn made the rest of us go bonkers with laughter because they were so adorable. (the kids - not the farts. )
After we ate breakfast in a restaurant one morning, I gathered up the kids and readied to go. My eldest was in kindergarten at the time, so naturally, farts and fart jokes were the height of humor for him. He didn’t want to leave the booth, and kept squirming around, stalling, hemming and hawing.
I sternly ordered him to get his jacket on and slide out of the booth so we could leave. He responded by darting under the table, and all of a sudden there was this sonic boom.
He poked his head back up from under the table and spoke, obviously in a voice designed to reach everyone in the far corners of the restaurant.
Yeah, me too. Farts are funny to me when they are unexpected and inappropriate. A priest breaking wind during a funeral mass is the height of fart humor. Frat boys farting on one another’s heads while playing Halo - not so funny.
Farts are a great equaliser, because, like them or not, everybody farts.
They come from a very personal region, and make both a noise and smell.
One time, back in my high wire days, I was dating this wonderful girl… I was head over heels and constantly on my very best behavoir around her…
It was late, we were talking of things profound and deep, as only two sophomoric kids can… I had a fart in me, but was hoping that if I shifted “just so”, the sofa cushions would absorb both smell and order.
She interpreted my shifting position as the prelude to our first kiss, and lept in, eagarly… (throwing me off balance, in all ways).
BRAPPPPpppp ph ph pth thhhhhh!
We looked at each other… and both broke out laughing…
5 minutes later neither of us was exactly laughing, but we WERE hugely enjoying ourselves!
A great ice breaker indeed, but maybe not for ALL occasions!
Well, you have two choices, really, even at a young age:
Fart and laugh at the sound and feeling of wind poofing from yer butt. “Wow, that’s totally out of my control, whoops, sorry, heh heh hee hee…”
Or, be horribly embarrassed; “Oh, how the hell is that coming out of me, what will people think??? I better hold that in…” and clench yer cheeks in fear.
The first reponse seems to be better adapted to getting along with the indignities of body, with some social discretion trained.
And what about the simple word “Fart”. It’s so perfect. What are words iin other languages for that same body effluence? Do tell, foreign Dopers.
Ooh! I know this one in French. The verb form “to fart” is péter. If I 'member my conjugations correctly, that means it’s:
je péte - I fart
*tu pétes *- you fart il/elle péte - he/she farts nous pétons - we fart vous pétez - the group of you (or formal you) fart ils pétent - they fart
The é is pronounced like the e in bet, so the root word sounds like our word for a companion animal. The noun, I believe, is le pet. Masculine, of course.
I’m pretty sure it’s a “vulgar” term like “fart”, and the polite way of saying it translates to “emit intestinal gas” or something.
