Biltmore Idiots

Someone mentioned to me that this blog had been tossed to the wayside, so I thought I'd put up a post to spur getting things back on track. Surely with the approaching holiday season, we will all encounter more than our share of idiots!

This post is actually based on an experience that Chris and I had some time ago, but we were reminded of it recently, and I thought it deserves a blog post.

Some time ago, Chris and I went to Asheville for the weekend to hear my brother's band play and see some touristy sites. Neither one of us had ever gone to the Biltmore, so we thought we'd buy the grossly overpriced tickets to get inside the biggest house in America. Just one time. However, we were too cheap to pay the $7 a person extra for the personal audio tour, consisting of an MP3 player that plays an audio description of whatever you're viewing. We thought that, being literate people, we'd be able to read about things just as easily and skip the annoying recorded voice.

I think there were about 8 other people there that day that made the same decision. The other 10,000 or so people spent their day bumbling around the mansion in perceived silence. Because they had silencing headphones on and a voice playing in their heads, they thought that the people crowded around them couldn't possibly hear what they were doing. So as we stand looking at art, at old bedrooms, at whatever, all that Chris and I hear is a chorus of flatulence. Everyone, everywhere in the Biltmore, is letting loose.

At first, it was funny. "Let's go to the nicest place in the country, and then fart freely and loudly!" We kept bursting into laughter, but no one else was in on the joke. However, after one long trip up a flight of stairs behind a man who farted with every step, the silliness wore off.

How could these people be so unaware of their surroundings? Just because YOU have headphones on and can't hear anything doesn't mean that everyone else has suddenly gone deaf, too. And even if they have, does that mean that it's now appropriate to constantly fart?

Finally, Chris and I ran across another couple in the same predicament in which we found ourselves. Finally, we decided the solution to this problem would be to comment, loudly, whenever someone farted. That way, we could indicate who was ruining our our frou frou tour with their gas. However, apparently talking is ruder than audibly farting, so we stopped. C'est la vie!