the smack factor

I burp a lot. It’s pretty silly. I always have. My parents used to warn me that if I didn’t pay more attention to and try to control my burping that I would accidentally let loose in meeting some day. I of course rolled my eyes at that. I was concerned enough once to notify my doctor about it. She asked what my diet consisted of. This was back in the day when I’d have Dr. Pepper for breakfast (fountain, from 7-11) on the way to class, Dr. Pepper (canned) heading out of class coupled with a Nutrigrain cereal bar, and then coffee and a roll with gorgonzola cheese and “house” dressing at my waitressing job. Then, I’d have at least 2 glasses of red wine after work. Let’s see, broken down, that’s school stress + acidity to the power of 90. My doctor said “Cut down on coffee and you won’t burp as much”

I am still burping.

And I really do burp without thought. If it’s loud enough to potentially embarass or make uncomfortable the person nearby me or visiting, I usually say “[insert name here]! really! You’re a guest in my home!” or something along the line of “you should remember yourself, we have guests!” Then they laugh, feel uncomfortable, and are less embarassed by my outage. Oh PS, I hate when people say “nice out!” when you burp. Like, what?

I’d like to end this post with an admission of correctness aimed at my parental units. I had joined been moved to a newly formed team at the ole place of employment - where we were all “new”.  However, a runtier girl joined the team and I was on my first “conference call” with her. wait, can it be called that with just two people on it? Anyway, she was asking me for the 80th time about what I was up to “because I really have no idea what you do” (this was meant to sound flattering, like what I did was so complicated she just couldn’t wrap her melon around it [hello, I wrote an inbox mailing and edited the horribleness that was my executive's outgoing emails][in addition to other arty thing, but the girl was artistic, so why the dumbing down? anyway.]. Where was I? Oh, right, I’m such an enigma. She’s blathering away and suddenly, I let out a huge, lip shaking, curtain waving, stomach concaving BRAAAAAAAAAAAP….ph.

There was no warning. I did it directly into the phone. And I laughed like a tickled hyena into the phone. total. silence. from the other end. i said “[name of runt], I am so sorry! I didn’t even know that was coming!” Still laughing because in my family we laugh at bodily functions. and come on, show me any executive that doesn’t launch a toot symphony after cheap Chinese. We’re all human. Some of us just have people to wipe our butts for us.

“it’s… okaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy.” Uptalk at the end. the call ended with her none the wiser and me happy to again be alone in my high ceiling upper east side apartment. Where my burps careened from wall to echoing wall in cavernous privacy.