“Religious Services: Come for the farts, stay for the God.”

Warning: it’s another immature one.

After the unrivalled success of “High School Graduation Bingo, 2006 Edition” (I got to call out “Bingo!” after hearing, for example, the words “journey,” “spread your wings,” “look to your left,” and a joke about doing laundry very poorly at college), I’ve decided to create a new version of Bingo for farts during religious services.

Obviously you’ll be wantin’ some instructions on how to play Church Fart Bingo: The way it’d work is that any time a participant went church surfing or synagogue chasing they’d bring their Bingo card with them. On it would be different services you could go to: mass, evensong, shacharit, maariv, kol nidre, Rosh Hashanah morning (1st day), Quaker meeting, zen meditation, etc. And then you’d just play the waiting game. Because, if you go to church/synagogue as often as I do, you’ll end up hearing enough farts to get Bingo eventually. And then, no matter if the cantor is in the middle of wailing away in Hebrew about how different people are going to die this year or if the priest is in the middle of turning wine into the blood of Christ, you would be LEGALLY OBLIGATED to scream out at the top of your lungs, “BINGOOOOO!”

So the reason I bring this up is that tonight I ended up at Kol Nidre. Partly because I’m training to teach religion and need to keep up with how different people are praying, partly because I still sometimes feel as though if I don’t go to services on Yom Kippur I’m going to get smote/smited/whatever the word is, and partly because I was missing some old, dear friends. I thought going to Kol Nidre would be a nice way to recall fond memories of getting the inappropriate giggles with friends during Yamei Kippur past, when someone farted during the morning service, when the old professor acting as cantor had a peculiar voice that a friend spent the following years imitating at completely random intervals, or when the cantor went ridiculously slo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-owly and caused the fast to drag on for even longer than necessary.

Hearing all that Hebrew and hearing the familiar tunes made me think of old friends in LA, Chicago and Jerusalem, and I’ll completely unashamedly admit that my eyes started tearing up. It’s rather embarrassing to do this during Kol Nidre, because I’m sure crying while you’re begging God for forgiveness in Hebrew can only look to your neighbors as though you did something well and truly fucked up this year that needs some serious atoning for. I imagine neighbors would be thinking, “Bitch, you clearly need to prostrate yourself.” Not really in the mood for a hearty helping of homesickness, I started to regret coming to the service, repeatedly asking myself, “What the hell were you thinking when you came?”


And then someone in my row ripped a substantial fart.


Stifling a quick giggle, I brushed it off as just a squeaky chair or a shoe noise. But then an unmistakable odor filled the air and confirmed my suspicions. And, dear readers, surely at this point in our relationship you can correctly predict my immensely mature reaction. Yes, the correct answer is indeed a solid 20 minutes of silent giggles, tears streaming down my face, a lobster-red face, and my entire body shaking like I was having some kind of a seizure.

Being trapped in a crowded Yom Kippur service with the severe people of England only made my struggle worse, as my brain kept trying to convince my sense of humor that we needed to behave ourselves. It’s supposed to be the most serious night of the year and I’m laughing about flatulence. Typical Sam, I’m afraid.

I calmed down for a minute, but then reflected on the number of religious services I’ve been to in which a member of the congregation audibly cheesed. After realizing that the number is actually appallingly high, and that the Jews have (according to empirical data that I have compiled) been the worst offenders, I completely lost it again and was back to silently shaking with giggles. With these kinds of stats I feel like I should pass Tums around at religious services, though maybe I’ll wait to see what patterns emerge on the graphs before deciding on a course of action.

But I promise I do have a point in sharing my story of someone farting during Kol Nidre. See, this is what I love about my life. At the very moment when I was feeling my lowest, like I made a huge mistake, like everything was now totally shit…at that very moment what I think is the single funniest thing in the world that could possibly happen ACTUALLY HAPPENED. If that’s not unquestionable proof that God exists and is a loving god, I don’t know what is.

Aw crap though, I’ve started using farts as proof of God’s existence. What would Anselm say?