Farting Putty

You know, one would think that, as the journey of motherhood proceeds, one would eventually learn what to give -- and what NOT to give -- one's son to play with. Yet despite a long list of "What-was-I-thinking-when-I-gave-him-that's," I still manage to make really stupid purchases from time to time. Then I spend the next series of days -- or weeks -- or even months -- regretting it.

Take, for example, the farting putty.

No, I'm not making this up. It's called "Flarp," and it comes in a small, clear plastic container that's a bit smaller than your average Play-Doh cannister. Basically, it's a soft, semi-gooey dough that comes in several fluorescent colors (and fluorescent scents). And it farts.

Now, granted, I love to laugh at funny sounds, and when I saw this strange goo on the shelves of Walgreen, it seemed like the perfect birthday favor for my not-quite-thirteen-but-definitely-too-old-for-tiny-cars son. Heck, he's the Fart King around here, so it seemed rather apropos to give him putty that farts when you sqoosh it. So I chose the laser yellow (banana-scented) and grinned to myself at the kick I was sure Jonathan would get out of his new container of Flarp.

Oh, he got a kick out of it, all right. His face lit up with a sly, devilish, "did you actually just give this to me?" grin as he pulled off the lid to see if the "Flarp" lived up to its promises. His first, tentative poke at the stuff didn't produce any gastric results, but a second, more aggressive squish released the most realistic fart sound I've ever heard from a non-organic source.

Naturally, we all laughed. And that's all the fodder Jonathan needed to continue making his putty fart through the rest of Spencer's birthday party.

Imagine, if you will, the videos I took of Spencer's special day. Here comes the cake -- FART! Spencer is blowing out the candles one by one -- FART! Hey, let's go open the presents -- FART! What a cool bike helmet -- FART!

What, what, what, WHAT was I thinking??

Yes, it was funny -- for about two minutes. And I have no idea how it actually farts like that! As if yellow goo isn't disgusting enough in and of itself, the sounds that come out of this stuff rival the worst bathroom symphony you can imagine. I mean -- it's so REAL! So utterly fart-like.

And so annoying.

I know, I know -- it's my fault for buying the stuff. I guess I'll be thankful enough to never find it smeared on my new sofa or melted onto an entire dryer-load of laundry.

Spencer's birthday is only three months after Christmas, which is when I made my last dumb purchase (I suppose three months was just enough time for it to slip completely from my mind). In an attempt to spice up Jonathan's stocking with something other than hooks and fishing tackle, I bought him a cool motion-detector at The Gap. "Wow," thought I. "Jonathan is going to have fun with this!"

Oh, yeah. First of all, the siren on the thing is enough to drive the most phlegmatic person off of the nearest cliff. Secondly, by the time I had been startled for the twelfth time (on the same day) and suffered through having to sit completely still because "someone" had just balanced a motion-detector on the top of my head, I was ready to lob the contraption into the microwave and nuke it until it exploded.

The booby-traps went on for weeks. I'd walk into the family room to start our morning lessons: "WEE-oh! WEE-oh! WEE-oh! WEE-oh!" I'd get up from the sofa because someone had just called me upstairs: WEE-oh! WEE-oh! WEE-oh! WEE-oh!"

You get the idea.

I was absolutely certain that I couldn't possibly have regretted a purchase more than I regretted this one. Of course, then I bought the Flarp.

This is all very ironic, too, because here sits a mom who vehemently refused to purchase -- or to allow any grandparents to purchase -- noisy, blinky, beepy baby toys. Our wee tots contented themselves with old fashioned blocks, acoustic xylophones, and a crib toy that played a melody from "The Toy Symphony" by Mozart's father. Ours was not an electronic-sounds-oriented house, and my sanity level was consequently a bit better off than my fellow moms who buckled to the lure of the beeping toys.

Of course, I did break down and buy Jonathan a really neat fire engine several Christmases ago, complete with sounds, flashing lights, and a cool extension ladder. This didn't cause noise pollution for very long, though, because my budding engineer took the whole thing apart to see how it worked -- and never quite put it back together again.

Maybe I'm subconsciously trying to make up for lost time. Perhaps I'm feeling as though I missed out on all the "Noise, noise, noise, NOISE" that might have been a part of my children's tiny years.

Then again, maybe I've just been desperate to find SOMETHING that my almost-teenaged son will want to PLAY with -- before he doesn't want to "play" at all anymore.

It sounds cliched, but he's growing so fast. In a few more years he'll be driving, and then it will be the sound of the engine revving up instead of the sound of putty farting at a birthday party. And instead of the siren of a motion-detector, I'll hear the warm buzz of an electric razor as he shaves his face in the morning.

I think that, when those days have arrived, I will give anything to listen to him squooshing some farting putty in his not-so-little hands.

I'm almost positive that I'll come up with something completely annoying to give him for his birthday in a couple of months. It'll do something stupid like fart or beep or self-destruct or shoot sticky pellets in my face, and I'll spend weeks ruing the day that I purchased it. But in the end, it'll be worth it, because it will afford my ever-growing son a few more opportunities simply to BE A BOY, even as his mind and body reach ever forward toward manhood.

Yep. I love the kid to pieces -- farting putty and all.