Excuse me....

Our family enjoys toilet humour; with four adults and three children under the one roof, we don’t have much choice. We could: a) pretend no one ever makes rude noises or disgusting smells (hard to do after a curry dinner), b) continually run to the toilet to hide our offensive expulsions, or c) make fun of it.

We’ve been reinforcing manners lately to ensure Boywonder and Tomboy remember to say excuse me after burping and farting, especially since they both attend kindergarten. They’re doing very well with it, despite the fact the adults in the house like to sit, smile quietly, and wait for the first victim to notice the skunk like odour before excusing his or herself.

I was suffering with quite a rumbly belly one morning and thought I could get away with a sneaky smell or two. Boywonder proved me wrong.

‘Who farted?’ he asked loudly.

‘It was me, sorry,’ I replied with a smirk on my face.

‘That stinks! Say excuse me, Mum!’ he demanded.

‘Excuse me,’ I replied sheepishly.

I thought that was the end of our exchange and that I was forgiven my indiscretion.

‘Oh! I can still smell it!’ whined Boywonder.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Say excuse me again, I can still smell it!’

I don’t know how, but Boywonder believed that saying ‘excuse me’ would make the bad smell magically disappear. I would've spent more time explaining things, but by the time I’d finished laughing at his confusion over the power of ‘excuse me’, the smell had dispersed and he had run off to play. 

I’m sure it won’t be long until Mr T teaches him the ‘pull my finger’ joke.