I remember sitting next to my mother in silent dread, as she drove me to some activity camp/after-school Korean cultural type of thing. I was roughly nine, as I do know that definitely, I was in the fourth grade. I was anxious and beside myself with agony as I had done the unthinkable that day in school: I farted. The entire class erupted in panic and laughter.
Beet-red-faced, I then had the audacity to lie and blame my odious crime on Tim Jacobson, the smelly, curly-haired, long-long-faced "Bert" string-bean kid who lived in the big, square "salt box" house on my bus route. I sat behind Tim on the bus ride home on many unfortunate occasions, which is why the elementary school bus is synonymous with a poop smell in my brain. Everybody in the school knew that Tim Jacobson farted several times a day and most-likely did not give a damn that he did, or had some brain damage, as he always gave the same just-woke-up slow-blink stare when anyone confronted him about his stinky activities. Needless to say, poor Tim was the BUTT of everybody's joke: his uniform pants were too short for his long, super-skinny, in-turned legs, he was a bit slow on the mark, and he smelled faintly of a dirty diaper. For reasons exceeding flatulence, Tim was not one of the cool kids. Nonetheless, I was a bully to use him as my scapegoat. (Sorry Tim!)
"He did NAWWWT, Sami!" growled Stephanie, the classroom loud-mouth bruiser who had enormous almond eyes, huge goldfish lips and a voice that was at least four times bigger than her short, pug-like frame. Stephanie sat right in front of Tim and she was right, as she always liked to be: it was "NAWWWT" Tim who farted.
"Turn aroun-duh, STEFF!", I hissed back. Thanks to the teacher's prompting, the whole class begrudgingly went back to their math worksheets, however, I could sense the buzz going around the classroom: WHO farted???
At that moment, the world stopped. I felt doom, despair and the leaden weight of anxiety. How uncouth. How terrible. I committed a natural bodily function, ALOUD!
This all happened in 1985 and "Everybody Poops" was not in print. And nurturing, New Age, "let-the-child-lead" parents were not on every street corner or driving every station wagon. Farting aloud was considered to be inappropriate for a well-mannered little girl. And I was mortified. And the whole thing was so damn funny.
Well, Mom being the enigmatic person she is, can come at you from a few different angles depending on her mood; I was preparing myself to be berated and to have just about the worst end to the worst day ever, but instead, I just remember her zoning out straight ahead behind the wheel; she was probably bored to tears, maybe even tipsy? After a few suspenseful seconds, she mumbled:
"Well, I don't think that anybody is going to give a rip about it tomorrow." Classic zinger if there ever was.
a) People fart.
b) People laugh about it.
c) Sh*t happens.
