The average human being farts about fourteen times per day. There is an unwritten rule that we should try to let our raunchiest farts loose when we are not in the presence of other people. This unwritten rule exists so we don't embarrass ourselves and feel disempowered. But sometimes we just can't hold it very long and so we are faced with the challenge of trying to discern whether our fart will be noticed, either by its sound or smell.

One option is to think about the foods that we've eaten in the past few hours to anticipate the potential rancidity of our bowels in a given span of time. Eggs? Broccoli? Garlic? Another option is to release the fart when one is outside on a walk, for example. The problem is that sometimes farts seem to linger instead of trailing away in the breeze. If our friend or beautiful lover catches a whiff of our stinky butt, we will feel disempowered. It is disempowering to be associated with a raunchy smell. No one wants to be the source of making people wrinkle their noses and say, "dear god!"

Sometimes we think we can anticipate that a fart will be silent and we let it slip out, thinking that no one will notice. Then, if does actually make a sound, we can try to squeak our foot on the floor or rub our iPhone on the table to mimic the fart in order to create the illusion that it wasn't ACTUALLY a fart, but some kind of OTHER sound that just SOUNDED like a fart sound. How naive do we really think people are? People know what farts sound like because they do it all day long too. But we are so afraid of feeling judged and disempowered, that instead of saying, "ooh, I just tooted," we try our hand at acting.

Farts create awkwardness all around. Even the person who smelled the fart feels disempowered because they don't want to let on that they've smelled it. But it's hard to hide the wince or grimace when smelling another person's fart. Smelling your own fart is fine, but smelling another person's fart is disempowering.