fart proudly

I was going to write about the inaugural poem read today; instead I have decided to write about something a little less olfactory but nearly synonymous.  Ben Franklin encouraged us to, "Fart Proudly," I remind you to not always listen to Old Ben.   

If I had to list the things I missed about teaching I’d put “working with smart, beautiful women,” on the list albeit down the list from things like, “June,” “July,” or, “August,” but it would make the list.  If there were one thing I really liked about the women I taught with, beyond their incredible intellect, extraordinary talent, and aesthetic qualities would be that they didn’t make sport of breaking wind.  The other mammals I work with have a lot of appalling traits: their grammar makes me wretch, they use words incorrectly, are politically incorrect to a degree that I notice, and I can overlook this all.  I can close my ears, I can stop taking a red pen to their conversations, and I can overlook insensitivity.  I have a hard time walking around with a plugged up nose.  People look at you funny if you have cotton in your nose all the time.  I realize that everyone passes gas but most people would have the manners to leave a small, enclosed and poorly ventilated space if they could before doing it.  My coworkers do not. 

I’m an English teacher.  Deep in my soul rules and propriety are what I love.  I am so tightly wound that sometimes after sitting I take the furniture with me when I stand back up.  I will accept the criticism that I am formal, starched, or even prissy.  This stabs me deep in my soul and makes me miss Valerie because I know she will never fart in an enclosed space in which I am trapped. 

I bring this up because the other day I had the worst experience I have had while on a job, ever.  I thought the most embarrassing thing to happen on a job would have been when a student fell into a tank at the aquarium but being questioned last year about the masturbating primates on the Zoo trip eclipsed that.  Maybe it could have been the time that a student held up the nub of pencil and shouted he had a small penis?  Perhaps it could have been a lot of things but my experience is teaching and if children are one thing they are as forgiving as they are vicious.  Last Monday something much worse happened.

I was on a test drive with a couple my parent’s age and they were trying out a smaller, more fuel-efficient car.  We were half way thought the wife’s test drive when she farted.  It wasn’t a dainty fart or a quiet one.  It was loud and its smell was terrifying.  It isn’t the chocolate thunder from down under served at The Outback but it would have made Taco Bell proud.  I think the rotting corpse of a puppy – or something else cute and wholesome - fell out of her body to deafening applause.  It wasn’t as simple as being the loudest, worst smelling flatulence ever.  With me things are never simple.  I can’t do simple.  I am cursed and you are blessed; reading about this is much better than living it. 

When the woman sounded her trumpet I thought it was something wrong with the car.  It sounded like someone tore a steel beam in half with their hands while slipping on a number-ten can’s worth of mandarin oranges.  It was a horrible, horrible sound.  I thought it was the car and said, “What the obscenity¹ was that?  Pull the car over!”  It was then that the smell and realization of what happened hit me.  If when I die I go to Hell it will smell like this.  It felt like what happens to someone who doesn’t know better and asks the waiter at the Vietnamese place for something authentic that most Americans wouldn’t pick².  My eyes watered, my throat started to swell up, and my stomach was starting to churn.  The upside is that I don’t have to ever trim nose hair again. 

When it hit the back seat her husband insisted that she either pull the car over or crack the window.  He cautioned me that, while he liked the car, he would want one without a dirty driver’s seat.  When we found a place to safely pull over – with the windows still shut – I jumped out of the car like I was on fire but pretended like I was giving up my seat.  It was horrible, physically and professionally.  During my teaching career I have comported myself well through crisis and outburst, incivility and calamity; from 9/11 to a student’s sudden, unprompted impromptu speech on why he enjoyed masturbating (and anyone who said they disagreed with him was a liar), I should have been able to hold it together when her colon could not.  I felt like a failure.  I’m just glad I didn’t have to do her laundry.    

 

1. I think I’m like Hemmingway and speak in this manner.  I am a nerd.  
2. I have done this.  It is very stupid.  I tried it once and Melinda told me it was stupid.  I went behind her back and did it later.  The Sooze General’s Warning reads: Listen to Melinda and you’ll live; otherwise you’re on your own chump.   

Comments

[Joanna Hammond]

I almost wet my pants laughing at that.

[DeAnn]

You're going to burn in hell! Now that woman's most embarrassing moment is on the internet... SHAME ON YOU!