When You Have to Go But Don't Want People to Know

executive running to the bathroom — Your office is the last place you want the sounds of your bathroom business to reverberate so everyone can hear them. Peter Cade/Getty Images

There is no end to human ingenuity. Our brains instinctually find ways to solve problems. For example, during the Paleolithic period (roughly 2.5 million years ago to 10,000 B.C.E.), cavemen lived with painful blisters on their feet. Then one day, a regular Barney Rubble-type guy invented the shoe. Later, when the most stylish cave person couldn't stand to wear ugly shoes for another day, he designed the first loafer (not really).

That ingenious problem-solving continues in the 21st century. Between social media, surveillance cameras, proctologists and naked yoga, privacy — like the remote — is hard to find. And don't bother looking for either in the bathroom. For this is the kingdom of bodily functions, where privacy, along with dignity, have no power.

Our Bodies Make Awful Sounds

And gastrointestinal sounds, no matter how heavy the door or wide the moat, will not be silenced. In other words, our bodies function — oftentimes loudly. And where we're pooping, we're also farting.

Even though farting and pooping is natural, they can be humiliating in the wrong settings (um, anywhere in public). We can't choose when and where the need will arise, and we definitely can't choose, well, how loud they will be. But what if we could drown out those sounds in the bathroom?

That brings us to the Faux Fan, a small device that can make more noise than our worst bodily functions can. It's the brainchild of a small family-owned company with a passion for privacy.

The Faux Fan is a small metal speaker that's about the size of a deck of cards. It has four different sound settings, each similar to white, pink or brown noise, with or without new-age sounding "melodies" mixed in. Its purpose is to be a portable noise canceling machine you can carry with you to hide the "sounds" that happen in the bathroom — no matter where you have to go.

The Faux Fan Drowns the Sounds Out

Obviously, we had to give it a try. The little fan proved to be effective in the mall restroom, although the nontraditional noise seemed to startled some, while others cast strange glances when we came out of our stall. But hey, nobody heard what bodily functions were happening in there.

At home, we have thin walls and no bathroom fan (they don't build them like they used to), which is when the Faux Fan really came in handy. Outside of the bathroom, the fan sounds a bit like a hair dryer and could easily be mistaken for one — perfect! The sound of a hair dryer is definitely better than a cacophony of explosive gas — am I right?

Perhaps the best feature of the Faux Fan is its 16 different volume settings. Everyone is unique, but rest assured, there is a volume and setting that will drown out just about anything your body can muster. It's also rechargeable via a mini USB jack and lasts about four hours (hopefully that will suffice). It even has a wrist strap so you can hang the Faux Fan leaving you free to do your business.

Humans have put a man on the moon, cured countless diseases, invented stylish shoes and built cell phones smarter than computers. Just when you think life can't get any better, we've conquered the last frontier. The shame of passing gas mid-poop, is over.