In Search of the Elusive Brain Fart

Welcome to the Weekend Gene Pool, where I trade you a mortifying but entertaining story for one of your own, which I will use next week.

But first, I would like to alert you that at the bottom of this column you will find possibly the best Gene Pool Gene Poll in the storied history of The Gene Pool. So stick around for it. Or leap ahead if you wish, but you will regret it.

(suggestion: if you are reading this in an email, click on the headline so you get the latest amended, emended and addended version.)

Last Tuesday, Rachel and I went on a two-day road trip to Charlottesville, to keep a medical appointment. We took Lexi the dog, as we always do, because we don’t like to board her or to impose her, with her many eccentricities and outrageousnesses, on friends. But mostly because we do it because we have found the perfect hotel for her. It’s a nice Comfort Inn that welcomes pets — but most important, Lexi welcomes it. She accepts being left alone, sometimes for hours, without barking or whining or breaking stuff because 1) it’s a comfy place, but also, 2) because there is a Bojangles that’s a one minute walk away, and whenever we come back, we bring her a tasty chicken patty. We have stayed at that hotel at least five times.

This time, Rachel had intended to bring her swimsuit — “I’ve decided to finally use their pool!” — but a half hour out she realized she had forgotten to take it. Rachel is not deterred by such things. “I’ll buy one down there,” she decided, with masterful resolve.

The first momentous thing that happened on the trip was that, forty miles away from Charlottesville, Lexi began panting very loudly. She was hot, apparently; fortunately, we’d brought some bottled water for just such an eventuality, and Rachel cupped some in her hands, but Lexi refused to have any. Time and again. And yet she was panting even louder — almost as if she was trying to tell us something … important. We just shrugged. So did she. So she returned to the back and formally revealed the actual source of her discomfort. I was driving, so I only heard it. It was a sustained gurgle. Rachel saw it.

“Is she puking?” I asked.

“No she is not,” Rachel said. Her voice was curiously taut.

Lexi was blasting diarrhea all over the back seat. Some of it traveled heroic distances before it landed.

Has this ever happened to you? Forty miles to go in a car doused with extremely pungent dog shit and no real way to get rid of it? In terms of oppression, I would dare to compare it to the 40 years the Israelites wandered in the desert after fleeing slavery under the Pharaohs and were forced to subsist mostly on manna, which is a fungus that oozes from a plant when it is chewed by aphids.

We made it to C’ville, cleaned the car as best we could, and checked into the hotel, which is when Rachel re-discovered, to her delight, that there was a Target within walking distance. She walked, purchased, and came back to the hotel, ebullient. She had found a ribbed red swimsuit that had been marked down from $45 to $12!

She tried it on and it and it looked lovely on her, or she looked lovely in it, whichever is the more romantic thing to say. I’m not good at this.

Throwing on a housecoat sort of thing, and grabbing a towel, she left for the pool. I didn’t go with her; I don’t do pools. We knew it would have to be a short swim — we had to leave for the doctor in 20 minutes. I sat at my computer to write — this very column in fact — though the subject matter would quickly change.

Rachel came back in fifteen minutes. Her hair, I noticed, was dry.

“It turns out they don’t have a pool,” she said, with as much dignity as she could summon. It had taken her so long because after some wandering, when she had begun to suspect the uncomfortable truth, she was too embarrassed to ask at the desk so she stopped and Googled “Comfort Inn” and “Charlottesville” and “pool” and she got a whole screen of hits, but all noted at the end “Missing: pool ”

So that is your challenge for today. What is your most spectacular brain fart?

We know we have recently asked you for the silliest thing you did, but we contend there are important subtle differences between the two oeuvres of dumb. We shall see if we are right.

Please send them to the magic brain fart button, right here:

Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

In an unrelated medical development, my doctor recently gave me an empty plastic jug the size of a valise and ordered me to put all my pee in it over a 24-hour period. To not miss a single deposit. And then to throw the whole thing out in a dumpster outside a Chinese restaurant.

Kidding. He actually wanted me to bring the thing in to him. They want to test it for some reason. I didn’t inquire fully. I didn’t fully want to know.

But I wasn’t upset because I realized it would give me an opportunity to discover something interesting that I had never bothered to notice, and then share it with you in a poll! How much do we pee in a day?

On the morning after the day of collection, I employed my bathroom scale, measuring me without the full jug, and then holding the full jug. From the difference, I deducted the weight of the jug, which was negligible. I took three measurements, because this is science.

Before I ask you the question, I want to tell you that when I turned in my pee, both my doctor and his tech reported that the quantity of my issue was within the spectrum of “normal.” Nothing remarkable one way or the other.

So:

And finally, here is your opportunity to reward me (and Rachel) for being willing to humiliate ourselves to the fullest extent of the law. If you are not already doing so, please consider giving me $4.15 a month, and I promise you I will squander most of it on that dolt, Rachel.

By the way, some of you might remember the very first time I wrote about a Rachellian brain fart. It was one of my favorite columns:

Here it is. No paywall.

Okay, I took enough of your time that you must have already voted. So:

It was the full monty. 5.6 pounds. Thats about three-fifths of a gallon.