Everyone has done it, so I am told, which is why I don’t mind bringing to light a story which centres around that menace of social etiquette, the fart. As amusing to some as disgusting to others, the much maligned ‘bottom burp’ intrigues and distracts, and creates for some very embarrassing moments, not least when you arrive at a new school, fresh-faced, acutely aware that these were reputation defining times.
The scene of this story is the reception of the school theatre, in which around a hundred thirteen year olds sat round in awkward groups, as their friendships ambled through their formative stages. There I was, crisp shirt buttoned all the way to the top, scruffy tie with too small a knot, and a new tweed jacket that immediately aged me by about forty years. No doubt the pudding bowl hair cut made an appearace too.
As is the way with first day nerves, all of the different boarding houses stuck together through the safety of familiarity, so there I was, sat with the other members of Cotton’s newest year. In the face of so many new and strange faces, we closed ranks and sat close to each other. I sat with my new friend George, who I’d met that morning, and we settled in for one of many inductions to the various departments of the school.
I sat crossed legged, with my knees up, arms resting on them, hands clasped. The drama teacher was speaking and as his dainty voice rolled serenely around the room, my mind wandered and speculated as to the time. It had been a long morning, and all of these inductions more or less said the same thing, which is almost always nothing important. It looked as though this would just be another one of those uneventful occasions through which I have sat many a time.
But no. As the teacher paused dramatically for breath, the room descended into a momentary silence, which was cheerfully disrupted by my bottom. There was an immediate change in the atmosphere of the room, and I don’t mean the balance of airbourne gases around us. A wave of heads turned, and as I tried to comprehend what I had just done, it was all I could do but to look at the sea of faces that had turned to smirk at the audacity of the farter.
But it is in these moments that instinct takes over, your body’s natural defense system kicks in, and Mother Nature once again proves that she knows best. And thank you, MN, for blessing me with the guile and dexterity with which I got out of this little pickle. I turned my head and looked directly at my new friend George, leaning a little the other way for maximum effect, a picture of disgust painted across my face.
I knew that my cheeks would have turned a rather deep shade of crimson, but they would have had nothing on the shade of Geroge’s, his pale complexion reddening as he realised what I was insinuating by my simple gesture.
I will never forget the sight of his disapproving, disbelieving eyes as they stared back at me, and when his gaze shifted to somewhere behind me, and shifted again, and again, I knew that I had got away with it. George’s poor face got redder and redder, through a probable combination of anger, injustice and disbelief, but for all the people who looked his way, only guilt for that outrageous faux pas could be seen.
George is one of my very good friends, and I’m sure he won’t mind being named in this story, if only because it proves his innocence. We have laughed a lot about this story in the time since, and I’m quite sure we are the only people who remember it. The fart did no lasting damage to either of our reputations, but I don’t think George ever sat next to me in another induction again.
The Warm Up 