Imagine this: your boss asks you to fly across the country to save an incredibly important deal for your company that your—and everyone else’s—job depends on. You have 24 hours to do it, or else it falls through. Everything depends on you. It’s your time to shine!
However, you must look your boss dead in the eye and say: “I’m sorry, I can’t; I’ve been put on the no-fly list for farting.”
While this may seem like the plot of an amazing lost episode of some cult classic sitcom you can only find on YouTube now, for one man in America, it very well could be true. (I know what you’re thinking, and no, the incident in question had nothing to do with Florida.)
See, on a recent flight from Phoenix (possibly the Florida of the West) and Austin, an American Airlines flight had to return to the gate because one man was excessively and combatively farting. (Side note: remember when people used to dress up for flights, and air travel wasn’t treated like, well, this?)
Can you imagine seeing the ubiquitous videos that pepper social media of people getting kicked off planes and thinking to yourself, hold my beer, I gotta top that? Or possibly not, because, according to People (the Florida of publications), the farting man in question was (allegedly) very, very hungover. I don’t know if that somehow makes it better or worse.
“I was seated near the row where this situation occurred,” the passenger recalled in the r/Austin subreddit. While the airplane was still at the gate, the documentarian says they saw and heard an “audibly disgruntled” and “maybe hungover” man. He reportedly exclaimed, “You thought that was rude? Well how about this smell,“ and proceeded to loudly pass gas.
“[I don’t know] what provoked that comment, and while kinda funny to overhear, it was uncalled for especially coming from a grown man on an airplane nonetheless,” the user continued.
Look, I’ve been extremely hungover on a flight before. At no point did it ever occur to me that the way to get through that specific type of misery was to loudly announce to a plane full of strangers that I was about to cut one and then proceed with the act. Even if that did seem like a good idea to me, I would not proceed to argue with the choice of on-board snacks that personally offended my nostrils as the gentleman in question did:
“The man who just purposefully farted moments ago decides to loudly and condescendingly say ‘Yeah, everybody, let’s just eat the smelliest food possible all at the same time,’” the poster wrote, seemingly referring to a scent unrelated to his own actions.
In response, a man in the next row reportedly remarked, “If you don’t like it you can fly private,” to which the gassy passenger replied, “That’s so f—ing rude.”
Another passenger chimed in, “I think we’d all agree you’re the rude one here,’” the witness added.
So if I’m parsing out the language of a-hole this fellow seems to be fluent in, it appears he did not like the way the cabin smelled due to food, so he decided to let one rip to prove a point that only made sense in his (allegedly) hungover mind, and—so convinced he was that he was right—continued to argue with people after committing his social transgression. Can you imagine having to deal with this man on a day-to-day basis?!
I think we all know where this is headed: he was kicked off the plane, and in a twist only Fartman didn’t see coming, he was surprised it came to that:
The scuffle caused the plane, which had left the gate and been moving toward the runway for takeoff, to stop and return to the gate, according to the redditor’s post.
At this point, the flight crew had to get involved.
“We get back to the gate and a flight attendant comes back and informs fartman that he will not be staying on this flight. He simply replies, ‘I don’t understand,’ and she tells him they’ll talk about it off the plane,” the witness said, concluding the post by praising American Airline’s actions.
Can you imagine being this man? I simply cannot. I understand the very human need to be right in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This is why I am willing to die on the hill that Grease 2 is the far superior Grease film. However, potentially landing on a no-fly list because my stupid ass decided to loudly fart, and then fight, with fellow passengers simply does not seem worth it to me. It is not a hill I am willing to die on, and it both confuses and frightens me that somewhere out there in this vast and untamed land we call America there is a man who, if only for a brief moment in time, believed it was. I wonder if he believes it was worth it, now, though. Only he, and possibly his proctologist, could say. For the rest of us it will have to remain a mystery.
(featured image: Touchstone Pictures)
