Note to readers: Because of the sensitive nature of today’s topic, my husband has asked to not be identified in this particular entry. In the interest of preserving his anonymity, he will be referred to here as “Fuzzy.”
I was born in a different time and place. My mother sprang from what passed for aristocracy in New Orleans, and she was taught that there were things a lady should and shouldn’t do.
I still refer to “chicken chests” because the only B-word my mother ever used in reference to the upper female anatomy was “bosoms.” It didn’t stop there. When the time came to tell me about the birds and the bees, Mother pulled me off a merry-go-round at the playground and took me to the car while my sisters continued to play. Her speech consisted of telling me to read a book, From Little Acorns.
Mother was so uncomfortable just telling me to read the book that I vowed never to read it, and I didn’t. She asked me if I read it and took me at my word when I said I did, but I didn’t learn about s-e-x until I got hold of my mother’s dirty novels when I was in about sixth grade.
It was not a happy occasion.
If Mother couldn’t even say the B-word, it goes without saying that some bodily functions were not acceptable in our house. Flatulence was a big one. Although my sisters and I must have done it because we had a word for it (we called it “pooting”), I don’t remember ever being in a room where I heard either of my parents let one slip. I was raised to believe that when one had to poot, one held it until she was safely out of the presence of any other human being. Whenever the time came, I would rush to the bathroom and run water to cover the sound. Southern ladies didn’t do that sort of thing, you see.
Then I met my husband. Fuzzy did not come from the South. He was a Utah boy, and he was all boy. That meant he was born with a joy in all things scatological. (He is not alone in this. One of the counselors in our bishopric is a sober Harvard graduate — the kind of person that every mother wants her daughter to marry. His wife confessed that every time he poots in bed he pulls the blankets over both their heads and shouts “covered wagon!” so she is trapped into inhaling the aroma. Boys — even Harvard boys — never grow up.)
Fuzzy discreetly kept his poots to himself during the courtship phase, but once we were married it was every nose for itself. I was totally horrified. We had not talked about bodily functions before marriage. I had expected that, like me, he would discreetly leave the room when nature called, run into the bathroom, and run the water to cover the sound of his indiscretion. Didn’t all adults do it that way?
Despite my pleas that he keep his odors to himself, Fuzzy was adamant on this. He would not poot in public, but once he was safely in the house he had paid for, he was going to poot with impunity unless guests were in the room. I retaliated by banishing cherries, green grapes and other “gassy” foods from our home for years, but it didn’t help. Being all boy, Fuzzy didn’t need an excuse to poot. He pooted for the same reason that dogs lick their private parts — he pooted because he could.
I never got used to it. As the years passed, things settled into a routine. The quiet peacefulness of our marital bed would suddenly be disrupted by a gastric indiscretion. I would shoot him my most fierce if-looks-could-kill glare and shout his name. Being duly chastised for what he considered both a normal bodily function and an enjoyable bodily function, he would either ignore me or would glare back. For a few minutes, or at least until the odor dissipated, there would be animosity in our otherwise happy home.
This went on for a long, long time. Then, after we moved into the house where we live now (which means it was at least TWENTY-SEVEN LONG YEARS after we got married), something happened. We were lying in bed one night when he let one fly. I opened my mouth to scream, and my mouth said something I never intended it to say. I accidentally said, “Bless you!”
Fuzzy almost fell out of bed. Ready to be chastised, his hackles were already up. When I blessed him instead of cursing him, his angelic face relaxed into a wreath of smiles. (Nobody has a cuter smile than Fuzzy has, and it melts my heart.) “Thank you,” he said, and the thanks were genuine. He wasn’t just thanking me for the words. He was thanking me for not getting angry.
I was stunned. For nearly three decades, we had followed the same miserable pattern of poot, chastisement, and mutual disgust. Anyone with the I.Q. of a turnip would have known that Fuzzy’s behavior wasn’t going to change by my yelling at him, or it would have done so long ago. But nobody ever accused me of being smarter than a turnip. On the contrary, I would have continued doing the same thing time after time after time for the rest of my life if an accidental slip of the tongue hadn’t stopped me short.
Fuzzy was never going to stop pooting, but by changing my own behavior I could turn those moments from moments of anger to moments of felicity. Despite what I had believed all those years, the problem was not Fuzzy’s — it was mine.
Now we say “Bless you” for any bodily noise — a hiccup, a burp, a cough, and, yes, the ubiquitous poot. We are so scrupulous about blessing one another that sometimes one of us will bless the other for turning the page in a book or changing position in bed. If a noise that sounds anything like a poot occurs, the offender gets blessed.
And no, the offender is no longer always my husband. The act of blessing him gave me permission to poot with impunity too. It sure beats running into the bathroom and turning on the water every time. I wouldn’t say either one of us is a pooting machine, and we don’t have any covered wagon moments, but the anger is gone. That one little thing, done completely by accident, made a big difference in our marriage.
Life is too short to be concerned with the position of the toilet seat, or where you squeeze the toothpaste tube. Brigham Young used to say to dissatisfied husbands and wives that if they could see their partner in his or her eventual glory, they would drop to their knees and worship him. From my own experience, taking this long view and overlooking the daily annoyances goes a long way towards marital harmony.
I often wonder now what other ruts I’m in that could be so easily gotten out of if I just made a tiny change in my behavior. I suspect a lot of us are caught in habits that make our lives inconvenient, unpleasant, or downright dangerous — habits that could so easily be changed if only we stopped to make a course correction.
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