And you just know that someone in the near vicinity is going to think you ripped one.
What do you do? This depends on who you're with. If you're with friends, you can laugh it off and explain what happened. If you're with family, you don't even need to say anything. But if you're with strangers ... Well, let me just tell you what happened to me this week.
I just so happened to be sitting in my Biology 100 class, absorbed in Facebook and StumbleUpon, as I am wont to be in the middle of the world's most brain-mushing GE. In the midst of this absorption, it became apparent that it was time to participate in an in-class assignment. We had to write down whether or not we should try to save endangered species, or something dumb like that. I don't really care what it was, because it's not really important. What IS important is that while I was waiting for the TA's to tell us what to do with our papers, my fingers were not occupied with my keyboard. So, as so-called "nervous" people tend to be, I needed something to do with my hands. I often struggle, especially when I'm extremely bored, to keep my hands still. They've got to be doing something. So I was clasping my palms together, squeezing my joints about, which led to my palms squeezing together. This was not a problem, as I had exceptionally dry hands that day. Except something went wrong, and there it went ... the flatulent noise that boys have perfected by the age of seven.
Only it wasn't a perfect one. Not one of the loud, obvious, fake ones that we all know so well. No. This was a terrible one because it was just loud enough to be heard, but quiet enough to sound like I'd tried to sneak a real one. There were people right in front of me ... I knew that they had heard. And I was sitting all by myself, which meant there was no way I could even pretend that the guy next to me was responsible. No. I was trapped.
I had to let them know that it was an accident! That it was the pure product of unfortunate circumstances, the result of the tragic laws of science and vacuums and whatnot!! So what do I do?
I start squeezing my hands together with furious speed.
But they, of course, were unusually dry, and I couldn't get the slightest hint of a sound to eject from my hands. So I lift my hands up a little higher, so that maybe if I can't repeat the sound I just created, then maybe they'd catch a glimpse of my hands and therefore understand that the mystery sound was not a legitimate Bronx cheer, but just the result of air rushing between my palms.
Some time after this, I just gave up.
But don't you hate that moment when you know that people around you think that that sound they just heard could have been the warning bell that their air is about to be befouled? Then, of course, you're in this losing battle with time trying to make the same sound again so people realize that you haven't tried to cropdust them.
Whether it's frantically rubbing your shoes against the floor, tromping all across the wood trying to find the squeaky board again, or squeezing your hands together with enough ferocity to permanently attach them to each other, we'll all do anything to keep people from thinking that we are guilty. And I think it's hilarious.
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