Silent but Deadly

So I'm on the way home to my 15,000 square foot mansion yesterday via the famed, metrorail system (www.wmata.com). Packed like a bucket of twizzlers, people who I do not know and never care to squished in on me from all sides; outside of this tin-can (though Italian-made) train, some guy's rear end pressed up against mine, and my elbow in some woman's neck could be considered assault. Ah, but not on the Metro...it is a touchy-feely (groping is the standard rush-hour greeting), and lawless place (except, of course, if you have a candy wrapper stuck to your shoe...then you're cuffed and cavity searched faster than you can say Butterfinger).

I'm only 2 stops from home. As I journey to the suburbs to catch my limo that will take me home, I think about what my personal chef will be cooking me before I take a lap in the pool and then get a full-body shiatsu massage...when, out of nowhere, an odor I can only describe as pungent, acrid, with a hint of lime (you put the lime in the blah blah blah...) assailed my nostrils.

The doors had just closed after vomiting a ridiculous number of passengers onto the platform, and I looked around for the culprit, and lo and behold...not a soul was around me. I spun round and round and wondered: "did that come from me and I just didn't realize it?" "Do I detect a hint of sulfured apricots in the aroma?" "Should I have salmon instead of steak?"

I came to the conclusion that I had become a victim of a toot-and-run (or poot-and-run, depending on where you are from). You've heard about it in movies, maybe experienced it yourself, either as the gas-passer or the victim left behind for dead. You know what I'm talking about. One thinks the cheek-flapping flatulence's noise and odor will get lost in the crowd, and no one will be able to identify the culprit, since everyone is thinking that someone else did it, so you're off scott free. The problem for me? The "run" part...that sweet smell was trapped in a box as the guilty party exited the train into fresh air, leaving me there to make those funny "do you smell that?" faces and trying desperately not to breathe. Chew on this: just because you don't breathe through your nose and smell it, doesn't mean it has magically vanished from the air. No, friends, the passed gas particles are still in the air, only now, you're swishing it around in your mouth, swallowing it in addition to that whole breathing thing.

Anyway, back to me. Panic gripped me, not only because I was turning blue and getting woozy from lack of oxygen, but also from thinking: "what if someone thinks I did it???? There was no one else around to blame it on, and if I tried to explain, I'd sound even more like a babbling idiot with a gastrointestinal problem. I clawed at the windows, and as the doors opened for my stop, I gasped for air, appreciating every cubic inch of smog-filled particulate air I brought in. Running for home, I wondered..."Should I have the chicken or beef-flavored Ramen???"