When I was a kid my mom used to love to go play BINGO. As a matter of fact most of my aunts and some of my uncles would get together and go play BINGO, leaving us kids at my grandmother’s house while they were out. I don’t know if they really enjoyed playing BINGO or if it was the fact that for a few hours they got to spend time together without the kids yelling and running around, not to mention the fact that there was a possibility of winning a hundred dollars for a straight bingo and five hundred for the last coverall of the night.

As kids, neither my cousins or myself minded the fact that we were dropped off at the my grandmother’s house - if we were lucky we would get to spend the night there and the whole night would be spent playing spies, as we tried to sneak into whatever room my grandparents were in and try to do it without them noticing us. We would crawl across the floor and hide behind sofa’s, under tables, etc. trying to be the spy who get the closest without being caught.

One of the things I remember about Bingo Night is that my grandmother would make a bean soup that she would serve us. Through the years I’ve sort of faked myself out telling myself that my grandmother was a great cook, so much so that I actually started to believe it was true, but if truth be told, the fact is that she wasn’t the best cook around. It seems that her specialty was either scrambled eggs with lots of white in them and bean soup. I hated scrambled eggs with lots of white in them so much that no matter how much ketchup I put on them I could not eat them. I would always give them to my cousin, Emilio. He would eat almost anything and everything that no one else would eat. I could handle the bean soup because it wasn’t near as bad as eggs with lots of white in them. My grandmother would boil pinto beans and once they were tender she would serve them with the broth and we’d have bean soup - simple as that. We soon learned that the best way to stomach them was by adding butter and lots of salt to the broth in our bowls

Everyone of us would sit at the table and eat the bean soup, which was not a good thing if your parents were picking you after Bingo because on the drive home you’d sit in the backseat of the car, with that bean soup bubbling in your stomach, gases building up, until you couldn’t hold it in any longer. You’d either unleash a loud, apocalyptic fart that would make your mother turn her head and look at you with disgust on her face. If that happened to me I would just close my eyes and pretend to be asleep, so I wouldn’t have to hear my mom talk about manners and how it was bad manners to fart in the car, especially during winter when it was too cold to open the windows. If you didn’t let one of the those loud butt trumpet sounds you’d be sure to let one of those silent ones that no one hears but in a few seconds has everyone in the car is gasping for air as their eyes water profusely, their brain itches and their nose hairs shrivel up and burn. Whenever that happened to me I would blame it on my younger brother and my parents would believe it was him, unless he farted first and blamed it on me.

“Oh, come on you guys,” my mom would say as she rolled down the window, “that’s disgusting.” And then, she’d go into her “you should know better than to fart in the car…you were raised with more manners than that” speech.

“But Grandma says that it’s dangerous if you try to hold a fart inside of your stomach” I protested, “because you can blow your insides out”

“Yeah,” my brother said as he let another silent, deadly one. That bean soup was powerful that night. “She farts all the time and she don‘t even care whose around when she does it. She just goes around BFFFT, PFFFT, ERT, BUUUURT all day long not caring if it stinks or not” My brother jumped in his seat as he made the fart noises with his mouth.

My dad started to laugh at the farting sounds my brother was making, but stopped when he saw the look on my mom’s face. Whether she admitted it or not my brother was right. My grandmother would fart whoever she felt the need to and she didn’t care where she was or who she was with. She could be outside watering her garden and talking to the lady next door and all of a sudden she’d lift her leg and let one rip just like she was a dude. Once she even farted right before they sang “Happy Birthday” to me on my birthday. I remember it was so loud that one kid even screamed from fright and for a second, just a split second I was afraid she was going to blow the candles right off my birthday cake. I know that’s impossible, but funny things go through a kid’s mind, especially when that kid is me.

“It’s true” my dad, looking at my mom.

“And sometimes she blames grandpa for it and sometimes she even blames the dog.” I said, “and the dog died like three years ago. How can a dead dog even fart? It‘s just not possible. It‘s her farting, I‘m telling you. It really is.”

“blrrruupp” my brother made another farting sound

“Stop it, all of you stop it.” My mom would finally say on the verge of laughing herself, “I don’t want to hear anymore about anyone farting.”

“Pffffffftttt!!!” My mom and I both looked at my brother as he made another farting sound, but this time he didn’t make it with his mouth.