Who Needs to Know?

Does the whole world
need to know my thoughts?
MY remembered?
MY forgots? 

Does everyone have to hear my words?
Would I explode
If I'm not heard? 

Does everyone even know I'm here?
And if they don't,
Will I dissappear? 

Whoever knows what I think and do,
Does their knowing make it true?
And does it change the value? 

To all of these, I answer no.
A thing I'm learning as I grow.
I just thought you should know.

-B.C. Byron
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Who needs to know our deep ponderings and secrets? Not everybody, that’s for sure. The internet is filled to the tippy-top with people’s thoughts, poured into the giant digital bucket day-after-day. Some of those thoughts should be shared. Many are better kept inside the sharer’s head – I’m sure you’ve read more than a few of these types of thoughts in the comments section of Youtube videos. The truth is, we’re much better off sharing most thoughts with people who care about us in real life, the folks who feel an obligation for our well-being and aren’t likely to drop a rude meme then sprint away. But it often seems so easy to share with anonymous strangers and so difficult to share with family and friends. Why is that? Why is it that the closer and more caring a person is to us, the less we want to share deep feelings with them? It’s something that can happen over time if we’re not careful. I don’t know why our human brains work that way, but it’s time to overcome it and tell the right people what we are feeling. Our parents and, for many adults, our spouse should be getting our thoughts before the internet of total strangers.

I realize there’s some irony here as I sit sharing my own thoughts to the entire world on my poetry blog. Nobody asked for me to blab on about how we all need to stop spilling our guts to everyone. I guess I should learn a lesson or two from my own words. So often my poems are actually just a reminder for myself. I’ll be reading this blog post to my wife before posting and get her thoughts on it. I don’t mean to be rude, but her opinion matters more to me than yours, dear readers.

Soda Fountain

My mouth is full of soda
when someone tells a joke.
At first I try to swallow
but I fear that I might choke. 
Can't keep myself from laughing
and the pressure's really mountin'.
Then out the nose that fizzy goes.
Splash!
Soda fountain.


-B.C. Byron
Quick, get a cup! Gotta’ save that soda coming out of her nose.
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For those of you that aren’t familiar with the phenomenon described in this poem, the nasal soda fountain happens when someone tells a really good joke right at the moment when you’re trying to swallow a big gulp of soda. The laughter pushes the liquid back up the pipe, past the mouth, and straight up into your nostrils. At first there’s a bit of panic as you feel like you’re going to choke on the bubly drink. Then you try desperately to force it back down your throat. When then doesn’t work, you squeeze your lips shut for fear of doing a spit take and shooting it out of your mouth. You’d think the laughter would stop at this point, but it just gets bigger. Before you know it, the soda has made its way up to the only exit available and sprays like a fire hose. It burns, but it’s pretty darn cool and totally worth the experience. Just make sure to grab a cup as soon as the soda launch sequence begins. Better to catch it there than on the floor. You woudn’t want to waste all the sweet root beer and I bet it would be extra foamy, just like the nose soda fountain machine I drew (this drawing gave my family the chills).

For some reason, root beer seems to be the most frequent nasal projectile. I’m not sure what it is about this particular flavor of soda that makes it so prone to laughter-induced spraying. Perhaps root beer somehow assists makes jokes funnier. It would be cool to prove the root beer hypothesis by trying this trick with multiple different types of soda in a more controlled scientific experiment. The difficult part would be surprising the test subjects over and over again as you go through the experiment multiple times in a row.

This poem makes also me wonder. Just how hard would a person have to laugh to make pancake syrup come out of the nose? This is a great way to rank the quality of a joke. The higher the viscosity of liquid that’s forced out the nostrils when it’s told, the higher marks the joke gets. Water out the nose is dad joke or pun level. Forcing soda out the nose is class clown level. Milk spray is maybe 1 million hits Youtbue video level. If it works with syrup, then you’re ready for your own streaming comedy special. Yet another set of important scientific investsigations to add to my long list. See you next time.