Probably third only behind cooking meat and keeping warm, primitive man realized that fire was a useful tool for lighting farts on fire, which is hilarious, as we all know. Done incorrectly, however, lighting farts on fire has the potential to cause you extreme internal bodily harm, which one man found out the hard way.
Once again, we let the hallowed annals (pun 100 percent intended) of Reddit’s TIFU teach us what NOT to do, in this delightful story about a man who made the mistake of having his girlfriend ignite his booze fart, which I’d have to imagine is probably the most flammable of all of the farts.
Like many Sundays, I had abhorrent rhino farts from drinking the night before. I told her the next time I had to let one rip she could hold the lighter to my fart box. No more than 5 minutes later I had one in the chamber ready to let loose. I did my best to hold it in while my girlfriend sprung up from the couch to find the lighter. With both of us giggling, I assumed the position – sitting down with my arms holding under my legs, pulling them back.
She lit the flame about 6 inches from my butt and I let a long, loud, slightly wet fart ring out. I heard the swoosh as the gas hit the flame and went up in a blue and orange fireball. I caught a glimpse of it and my girlfriend’s look of amazement. Honestly I had no idea the flame would be so impressive.
Here’s where it starts to go wrong.
The fart lasted for about 2 seconds, and when it stopped, my sphincter retracted and sucked the gas (and flame) back towards my asshole. Since I was wearing gym shorts, some of fire came back through the small holes and did burned the shit out of my asshole.
I actually felt the fireball get pulled into my ass and then poof out once the stream of gas got cut off. This, as you might imagine, was quite painful. Additionally, it added a wonderful, burned-asshole-hair smell to the already terrible stench of fire farts.
At this point, I’m clutching my asshole and waddling towards the bathroom to grab a baby wipe and survey the damage while my girlfriend is rolling on the floor laughing. When she caught her breath she came into the bathroom and asked how I was. I put my dignity aside, bent over, and spread my cheeks so she could take a look. Luckily there wasn’t any real damage – a little red with some burned hairs. Worth it.
Now, I’m not really on the up and up when it comes to the science of flaming farts. However, our resident science nerd, Dan Seitz, pointed out that this guy actually got off lucky because if the flame had gotten sucked up just a little bit further, he could have done some serious damage to his colon for the same reason why “fire-breathers aren’t supposed to inhale because they’ll flash-fry their lungs.”
Think about that next time you’re experiencing a particularly painful Mexican food dump. At least the inside of your colon isn’t literally burned from having fire sucked into it!
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