I tend to remember events in my life in terms of the book I was reading. My life began with the first book I read. It was called “The Boxcar Children.” It detailed the lives of four orphans who decide that instead of living with their grandfather they would much rather spend the rest of their lives in an abandoned rail cart in the middle of nowhere. Having read no other books, it took me about forty sequels over the course of the first grade to realize that I hated the Boxcar Children and their whole horrible decision making process.
In the second grade, when I discovered that people wrote about monsters, explosions, magic and KILLING people a new era began. I read every horror story I could lay my grimy little paws on, the Arthur Legends, the works of Susan Cooper, and by the end of the year was ready to move on again. Over the summer of the second grade I fell in love with the works of Brian Jacques, and hastily consumed Redwall, Mossflower, and Mattimeo.
At the beginning of the new school year, when I was sitting in Mrs. Magey’s class during silent reading time, having to fart so bad I was sweating and biting my lip, I was reading “Salamandastron.” While Salamandastron was not the next novel in the series chronologically, I had chosen it because it had an impressive anthropomorphized badger on its cover and I wanted to know more about the prophetic paintings in the mountain fortress. This was, of course, hampered by the fact that if I didn’t rip one in the next minute or so my eyes were going to explode. As much as I love books and stories, sometimes the real world provides us with emergencies we can’t ignore.
Unable to concentrate on the story of the badger lord, I took a deep hurtful breath and assessed my options. I would have risked letting one fly had there been some ambient background noise in the room. A few kids arguing over who got to use the computer. Or some kids fighting over the bins in the activity corner. But it was silent reading time, and aside from the occasional creak of someone leaning on their cheap plastic one-piece desks there was no cover. Only a zen like tranquility in which even a heavy sigh was sure to be noticed.
I should have asked to leave, but for some reason I was against the idea of going to the bathroom for no other purpose than to fart and walk back out. I need more options. Okay, I told myself, if we do this we’re going to have to do everything we can to minimize the noise. Piece by piece a plan began to tumble together.
Believing at that time that the mechanics of fart noise involved the intensity with which my butt cheeks flapped together, I dug the left side of my ass into the seat and raise the right. I hoped this would serve to separate my ass cheeks while the gas was exiting my rectum. As for the smell… all I could hope for was that it would be one of those rare odorless farts. The kind that smell like you’ve just walked into an old attic and pass without remark. I turned my attention to the other students at my desk cluster, waiting for the optimal time.
Jessie Hovig, a boy whose skull had never fused together, and suffered from a multitude of mental disorders picked his nose to my immediate left. We had become close in first grade when I had been sent to the Chapter One classroom after it was erroneously decided by my instructor that I suffered from autism. To my right was a boy named Eric Anderson who I had once told on in first grade when he wrote the word “SEX” on one of my assignments. I knew I could expect no sympathy if he caught me in the act. At the opposite end of the desk cluster was Tiffany Acena, who was quietly reading her own book. I waited for what I felt was the proper time, and grunted. Like a man summoning the will to fix his own dislocated shoulder, I bit my lip, grabbed my desk and let loose.
What followed was perhaps the loudest fart I have ever emitted. For the longest while it simply rumbled from out of me, causing perhaps thirty students to simultaneously look up from their books to turn in my direction. Then it rose in pitch, as some farts do, as if taking the tone necessary to ask a question, and then vanished abruptly. At which point every single person in Mrs. Magey’s classroom, including Mrs. Magey herself, burst into raucous laughter. Jessie celebrated this jubilant sound by cocking his head back as he bellowed, and sucked a booger off his finger.
How long until they know? I thought. How long until my name gets mentioned. It was bad enough that the laughter had been caused by something I had done, but once my name was mentioned…. all that laughter would soon turn to me. I would be be the one being laughed at, not some sourceless fart. I, a living, thinking, human being. I bent down on my desk, waiting.
“Oh my God, Jessie! How could you do that?” Eric shouted. This brought the class to new levels of laughter. I looked up, blinking. Jesse sat there, laughing. Oblivious. I blinked again. The entire clas was still laughing, but they were laughing at Jessie, not at me. Poor, unformed skull, retarded Jessie. Jessie who would never know he had been insulted to defend himself. The truth rose in my throat.
We hide from the truth, but it always finds us again. I farted. Do you hear me! It was me. I filled this room with flatulent thunder! I wanted to shout… but against the laughter I could not summon the courage. I washed the truth down with the cold drink of cowardice and said nothing. Poor Jessie. Poor Jessie who would never know what I had done to him.
To this day, I am ashamed. And Jessie, if you ever read this, or have learned to read for that matter, I am so terribly, horribly, awfully sorry. I can only hope that is enough.
