It’s just gas. And everybody passes it. But it is embarrassing when you pass gas out loud. Especially, if you are the teacher.

They say that elephants never forget. I would modify that to say that if they were fourth grade male elephants, they would not only remember everything, but use any embarrassing situation against you until the day you died. Maybe longer. At least that has been my experience. And I have a story to prove it.

It was my first year of teaching. The first day, in fact. I was thrown to the wolves that are fourth grade boys. (I know. I know. I should stick with one animal metaphor, but this is my story, so I will mix metaphors if it suits me.) We were having a great time learning math. I had finished writing on the board and turned to face the class when every boy in the room, fell to the floor. They were gasping and moaning. Some were holding their noses.

“The smell!”

“Open a window!”

“We’re gonna die!”

“SBD! SBD!”

I looked around. I noticed that I was mistaken. Not all the boys were writhing on the floor. Jonathan was sitting in his desk with his head down. Apparently, he was the one who had farted. An SBD fart to boot. Silent But Deadly.

“Listen boys, there’s nothing wrong. It’s just a little gas. And everybody passes it.” I finally smelt it though. I scrunched my nose. Just a little.

“Hah! He smelled it too.”

“SBD! SBD!”

The shouting and writhing and general antics took me back to my days as a fourth grade boy. I remembered being Jonathan. Well, not quite. I was only embarrassed once in my life about farting. And it was because I let out a squeaker with hardly any smell at all. You see, in our circle of friends, we turned farting into an art form. And mine were could be the loudest or quietest, the longest or the shortest. But my farts were always the deadliest. Except that one squeaker. I had never lived it down.

Well, I tried to calm the kids down, but they had gotten into a frenzy. Even the girls had joined in. They were scrunching up their noses or even pinching them. It was that awful. At least to them. So I did the next best thing that I could. I continued my lesson. I turned to write on the board. And that was when it happened.

I was writing without saying anything. There was a lull in the shouting and writhing. A dull roar, as it were. And then there was an explosion. Okay. Not a real explosion, but an explosion between the legs. That was what the dictionary told us way back in fourth grade. A fart was a small explosion between the legs. Well, the small explosion that day got everybody’s attention.

I turned around to address the students. They had all turned to look at Jonathan. His head was up. He looked at the few boys who were looking at him, and shook his head back and forth. He raised his hand and pointed to the front of the room. Everybody was looking at me.

Jonathan said, “It wasn’t me, it was him. It was the teacher.”

It was silent. Completely silent. And then there was laughter. And a few jibes.

“That was a big fart.”

“Ha! Ha! I never heard a fart so loud.”

“He farts louder than my dad.”

“What a goober.”

Some of the comments had come from the girls too. The roars continued until…

“Jonathan, our new teacher’s worse than you.”

“Yeah. I know. But…”

Jonathan never finished his thought. He fell to the floor writhing like the rest of the boys.

“Argh.”

Most of the girls fell to the floor too. After all, everybody knew that hot air rises. Even farts. So the floor was the safest place.

The next day, all the kids were talking about my humongous fart. Both the sound and the smell. Ugh.

“Can you believe he did it in front of the whole class?” Jonathan was yucking it up with the rest of his peers.

The kids teased me about the incident well beyond the end of the school year. In fact, it was my claim to fame almost like it had been in my younger days.

One day, long after my first group of fourth grade boys had gone from the school, I got a visit from Jonathan.

“Thanks for that first day in fourth grade. I was new the spring before and the kids teased me for being a new kid and for being a guy who passed gas a bunch. But your fart changed everything. I was just one of the guys after that. And I know you did it on purpose.”

I raised my eyebrow. “Oh really.”

“Yeah. I did some investigation. You went here a long time ago, but some of the old teachers at this school and at all the schools where you went still talk about you. They even gave you a nickname.”

“Do tell.”

“They say that you’re the King of Farts.”