The Shower Effect

Hey all. Today I realized something that I've actually known for quite some time, but I guess I needed a near-death experience relating to it in order to throw up a jount about it on this "blog." Let me lay it out as it happened.

I woke up today at 6:50. My roommate is kind of an asshole and wakes up needlessly at around 6:30 every day, then promptly opens his laptop and blasts Paramore and Slipknot, among other things (mostly "bands" that I've never heard of nor care to know of). So I was barely conscious - but conscious nonetheless - from around 6:50 to 11:10. At 11:10, I decided it was time to get out of bed and shower and get ready for Theories of Personality at 12:10 (where I am now . . . bored).

So I get into the shower, and within the first few minutes I fall asleep. What seems like three seconds later, I wake up suddenly and uncomfortably - but I don't know why. Two seconds later, it becomes all too apparent.

I had farted.

Now let's examine the physics of this. While a fart in the shower seems to be much more powerful than a non-shower fart, this is wrong. According to Facts on Farts, the high humidity and temperature in the shower naturally heightens our sense of smell (and taste . . . yuck), thus creating the illusion of a smellier fart. In addition, the fact that the shower is such a small, enclosed space, and the fact that the humid air circulates much more quickly through the shower stall than it would through a larger space - for example, a classroom - adds to the speed and "oomph" that the smell hits your nostrils, cutting the time delay from poot to first sniff from around 20-30 seconds to around 10.

On an interesting (and very serious) side note, the Shower Effect works on stuff other than farts . . . such as marijuana. In complete seriousness - NEVER. EVER. SMOKE BUD. IN THE SHOWER. True story: my friend knew this kid who was smoking pot at his house alone, when his parents suddenly came home early and wanted to bring him out somewhere. Freaking out, the kid stripped naked - still smoking - and jumped in the shower, turned it on (hot) and pretended to take a shower, while still smoking his pot.

Three hours later, his parents found him passed the fuck out in the shower, naked as the day he was born - with his weed - shower water (now freezing cold) hitting him full in the face.

So yeah. Don't fart or smoke in the shower. And whatever you do, DON'T do both.

But what you SHOULD do is . . .

Stay classy