Two Christmases ago one of my fifty-something relatives gave my twenty-something brother the gift of a fart machine. And because, deep down inside, we are all still only seven years old, we all thought that was just hysterical. Especially the men, who immediately went about testing the highly detailed and technical scientific hypothesis entitled, “Hey-what happens if we do this?!”

So this weekend I was visiting my brother and sister-in-law, and for some completely inexplicable reason I was compelled to discover whether or not he still had the fart machine.

“Oh yeah, I’ve still got it,” he said. “And did I tell you that whenever I use my cordless phone, it sets the fart machine off because they both operate on the same frequency?”

No, he had not shared that awesomely hysterical fact with me. But wait-the story gets even better.

Because one day he had to call maintenance for his apartment because his toilet, of all things, was broken. So as he was trying to explain his bathroom problem to the maintenance guy, he was being accompanied in the background by a continuous soundtrack of variations of the sound, “PBLTTTTTT!”

That, to quote Mastercard, was PRICELESS.