MetaChat - Lou Rawls WTF?

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05 July 2007

Lou Rawls WTF? When I was a child, there were two different social fart rituals: For the first, you would have to say "safety" before someone else said "doorknob," else they could hit you until you grabbed a doorknob and said safety. The other, and weirder one, was that you had to say "Lou Rawls" or anyone who had heard your fart could hit you once.

Why "Lou Rawls"? Did anyone else have a similar ritual? What the fuck?

My father hypothesized that it had something to do with Rawls's rich, deep voice, which may have sounded like a particularly resonant fart.

post by: klangklangston at: 12:43 | 10 comments

You're a boy, right? Boys are weird.

posted by crush-onastick 05 July | 12:45

I remember safety/doorknob, but Lou Rawls? That's pretty odd. I'll be interested to hear if anyone else has ever heard of something like that.

posted by Miko 05 July | 12:49

No rituals, no warning except for pull my finger. My people could use more guidelines.

Was it just your family or a community thing? Did you guys also play Marco Polo? No one I knew/know plays that either.

posted by auntbunny 05 July | 12:51

I recall no fart rituals, except for the saying "Excuse Me" if you thought someone heard you.

I did play Marco Polo, however, and to this day have the urge to shout, POLO!" whenever my neighbor calls his son Marco.

posted by richat 05 July | 12:58

It was a community/school thing. I always thought it was puzzling, but no one I've asked who did it knew exactly why. Some sort of mutated local folk ritual, I'd guess, but I'm curious and I wanted to see if it was just us.

And yeah, we totally played Marco Polo. To the extent that just play-calling Marco Scutaro's name (he plays for Oakland) was enough to crack us up all these years later.

posted by klangklangston 05 July | 13:07

Umm, no. Actually my mom was very anti-fart so a quick "excuse me" was mandatory.

posted by miss lynnster 05 July | 13:17

My folks just ignored farts, which really made my brother and me squirm to keep from laughing.

To this day, I have no idea how they kept it together. Farting is hilarious.

posted by Hugh Janus 05 July | 13:21

No fart rituals, but we did play Marco Polo. Ah, that was fun. I wouldn't mind playing it again, actually.

posted by treepour 05 July | 13:51

In my family if you say squash, then anyone else is allowed to push on the top of your head and yell "squash!" back to you.

posted by grouse 05 July | 14:25

when my sister and her group of friends would burp, they'd put their hands to their foreheads as if they were thumbing their noses and holler YOU ATE IT!

the last person to holler YOU ATE IT, ate it.

posted by jason's_planet 06 July | 19:53

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