I am such a good brother.

The other day I was at my sister and brother-in-law’s house with my whole family. Without preamble, I gagged the gag of someone that had just been given rat poison. They think it’s funny when I gag and I don’t blame them, it is. The cause of the unexpected gag was a dirty, distended diaper. My nephew’s foul diaper gifts are ruthless. They linger in clothes longer than cigarette smoke or campfire smoke.

Much to my family’s delight, I was asked to clean him up after a particularly moving musical number emanated from his backside that probably topped off his diaper. I somehow managed to control my spastic gag reflex enough to keep my food down. After a particularly concentrated whiff found its way into my nose and nearly eliminated my olfactory sense for good, I stared at the contents of the diaper as if it possessed the answer to all of life’s secrets. My brow furrowed in contemplation as I tried to make the association. My little sister asked what I was doing. I told her to come over and tell me what she thought it looked like. Reluctantly she peered into the bowel evacuation and squinted in reflection. As she looked and tried to see what I could possibly being seeing in a disorganized anal blowout resembling a Rorschach inkblot made from feces, I looked at her, then back at the diaper, then back at her face and said, “Amazing!”

“What,” she asked nasally as her hand pinched her nose.

“It looks like your face!” I said stoically with a face registering disbelief. Normally I crack up in my delivery but not this day my friends, not this day. It was perfect.

Everyone looked at me for a few seconds as their brains processed what had just occurred. My mother then slowly lowered her gaze to the ground and shook her head probably wondering how I could have come out of her. I can describe the look on my dad’s face with two words: utter disappointment. I have never been so happy to disappoint him and doubt I could exceed the performance if I tried.

That lasted for half a second before everyone burst out laughing. Such is my family, easily amused with anything having to do with farts and poop. BTW, the girls in my family, mom excluded, can easily out-fart and out-stink the guys any day. It’s gross.

I love my sisters for resisting the probably unremitting urge to kill me in my sleep. What a bunch of sweeties!