Narrative Essay

The air above ground was humid, above 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and smelled of exhaust and manure. To get to the first destination of the day, we had to walk into a concentrated alleyway of compost and people, resembling a “haunted hallway” inside a “haunted house.” The only thing missing was a guy behind a rubber mask holding a chainsaw without the chain. Down in the museum, or the memorial to most, it was cool, dry, and clean. To be honest, it was a bit shocking to take the trains into New York and walk through the artificially swamped streets of pedestrians and cars, weaving through the noise and commotion to enter a place of somber solitude. I was in the middle of the 9/11 memorial, walking up to exhibits with strangers and parting separate ways; nothing was said. It was June of 2014 and my brother Shane had been invited to the National Summer Special Olympics for running, or sprinting-- I can’t remember too well. He had gotten 3^rd place for his team, which didn’t show up after the announcer called them to the stage, so he stood alone and accepted six bronze medals. He looked awesome.

While my brother stayed with his team in New Jersey, my mom, my brother Michael, my mom’s sister, and my cousin took the day to travel around New York. This wasn’t my first time in the arguably most popular city in the US, and it felt the same as when I first walked the streets several years ago with just my father, my brother and I. The day was set for us to stay in the memorial for a few hours, eat dinner at a Chinese restaurant in, coincidentally Chinatown, and see the Broadway play Of Mice and Men. In lowest to highest form of highlights, James Franco was a mediocre actor, the fried dumplings were so good I’m afraid to try them from another restaurant, and the memorial itself presented a human behavior code of conduct that I had never recognized before.

Upon entering the memorial, we slowly began to move ahead or lag behind, each of us in our family with a different level of eyesight, reading, athleticism, and attention span. I don't remember if I was ahead, but that wasn't my area of focus. Eventually, I was by myself in a colorful crowd of people, all silent and introverted. There was no common theme among these people, they came from everywhere. Nobody spoke, and if they made an exception it was to either hush someone or find a way of silencing someone. Walking from one artifact to another, contributing to the sole-scraping ambiance, I considered myself completely immersed in the experienced laid out before me. One behemoth display that I analyzed for a while was a gigantic wall of a few hundred squares, each painted a different shade of blue. Several stands that spanned the front of the perimeter said something along the lines of, “We asked everyone with spare time to try remembering what color the sky was on September 11^th, then paint it on the given canvases.”

Nearing a half hour in, as I approached a lone-window that remained unshattered in the collapse of one twin tower. Somebody walked up beside me to read the slab I was reading; a description of this fractured cement wall and what it meant. As stated before, nobody greeted each other or made remarks upon the exhibits; there was a hidden code in place that prevented people to impulsively talk. When you're standing beside someone, the only give away of their experience was how they breathed. I was just finishing the description and losing focus on the window when the man let one rip.

He let one rip and walked away.

I didn't react appalled, gasp or scoff, but it internally shocked me. Something as sorrowful and morbid had just been mixed with something absurdly random. I listened in to the people around me, waiting for a chuckle or a mumbled curse, but everyone kept quiet. I walked to a different exhibit than the one he shuffled to.

By the time I walked away from the window, gas was on the mind, despite my efforts to push it back. I slowed down to another artifact and started reading when someone, defiantly a different person, did the exact same thing-- as if nothing had happened. Starting then, not only was I to examine the entire memorial, but I began a sort of sociological study. I wanted to see just how frequently someone would come to an exhibit, pass gas, and continue touring the memorial. I walked from bikes, to pillars, to pictures; giving a complete read over of the information, but listening in.

Every time, every exhibit, someone farted.

It felt like a cruel joke, something out of a shock value comedy was being played on me. It wasn’t enough that one person did it and soiled a moment, it was the entire duration there that was ruined. Everything that I had taken to heart had fell upon a whoopee cushion. By the end of it, I regrouped with my mom, brother, aunt, and cousin, and retold what you just read before, more or less poetically. They sneered and scoffed, forgetting the joke by the time we walked back to ground level. We got lost trying to find the Chinese restaurant that my aunt wanted us to go to, she has lived in New York for her entire life, but rarely goes to this specific restaurant. After passing by locations resembling scenes from Law and Order: SVU, most likely because they were based upon or shot there, we ended up taking some stairs down into the restaurant and having the best Chinese food in my life. Then, the bill was paid and we parted ways: my mom, brother and I walked to Times Square and my aunt and cousin headed back home. I forgot the location of their house, but it reminded me of The Amazing Spiderman, so if you know where that is, that's probably a good idea where we stayed for my brother's olympics. The show was fine, the counterpart to James Franco really pulled off the innocent invalid, but the set pieces for me stole the show. Despite the remaining events of that day, it has stuck in my mind how people just “crop dusted” without reacting to it, or without anybody else showing offense. Was it too much to ask for an apology or just to hold it in?

Maybe it was.

People don't like to cause scenes or be involved in a scene. The “bystander effect” can vouch for this. Addressing someone's farts is as juvenile as letting them out in the first place, so I guess myself being a “sociologist” about it was childish in the first place. But it's not like it never happened in other morbid places. In fact, I bet you can recall some tragedy where someone acted inappropriately and remained unacknowledged by others, as if they had suddenly disappeared from the area. Maybe someone laughed at the wrong time or forgot to silence their phone, walked out of the room during an emotional scene, or the reverse for that matter. Whatever it takes to keep ourselves hidden, we'll ignore a colossal cement memorial full of farts as long as the AC works.