The Superfarter

by Cal Osborne

The Superfarter

  Copyright 2013 Calvin Osborne.

  Chapter 1 - The super fart

  If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that you don’t laugh at farts. I mean - I know farts are funny. Sometimes it’s hard not to laugh at farts. Like when your friend does a really long, loud fart. They are the funniest farts. Even my Dad laugh’s at some farts. Sometimes when we are watching TV our dog Milo farts. His farts are bad. Dad always laughs at that. He waves his hand and says “WOW. I think something died in Milo’s bum”. Sometimes Dad tells fart jokes and laughs at them too. Like “did you hear about the blind skunk? He fell in love with a fart. ” Or “Why is a fart like a sewing needle? It can go through your pants without making a hole.” Or “Why did the chicken cross the road? Because the other chicken farted.”

  Even the names people call farts are funny. Like butt-burner, thunder from down-under, smell-o-gram, fryer-butt, smelly the un-friendly ghost or bum-burp. But, no matter how funny the fart is. No matter how funny the name of the fart is. Just don’t laugh at it. Laughing at a fart got me in more trouble than I’ve ever been in.

  It started in ‘Read Week’ at school. Our teacher Ms. White took our class to the library. She’d drawn huge pictures of pirates and stuck them all around the room. She’d made us all little eye patches and pirate hats out of paper. She read us pirate books. She sang a pirate song with us. She sang the verses, and then we’d sing the bit that goes “a pirate’s life for me”.

  Ms. White is the best teacher ever. She’s funny and nice, and always happy. She draws pictures with us, sings songs, and plays games. She still makes us do maths, but she makes it fun. She lets us play math world on the computer. Sometimes we play maths races or word wars. She wears long pretty dresses, and she smells like pink lollies.

  There’s just one problem. When she speaks to me I sort of stutter. I don’t know why I stutter, I just do. I don’t stutter when I talk to anyone else, just her. It’s something about her hair and that yummy lolly smell. It makes me feel really shy, my face goes red, and I get hungry. The other kids think I love her, but I don’t. Some of them tease me and sing “Danny loves the teacher, Danny loves the teacher”.

  So, our class was singing ‘a pirate’s life for me’ in the library. All I could sing was “a p-p-p-p-p-p-p” – stupid stutter. It made me sound like I was trying to rap. Since I couldn’t sing, I just sat there watching Ms. White play the guitar and sing. She was quite happy and sounded like a pop star. About half way through the song she suddenly stopped. The room went all quiet. Everyone looked at her. Her smile turned into a funny looking frown and her nose was screwed up. She put her hand up to her nose then let out a little cough. Her eyes looked like she was going to cry. For a second, I wondered what was wrong, but then…..I smelled what she could smell. Someone had done the worst fart ever. It was a super-fart.

  It smelled like dog pooh mixed with rotten eggs, off fish, and a dead skunk. It wasn’t just bad, it made you feel sick. It was like the worst stink bomb ever had just blown up in our library.

  Before I could work out what to do, I heard Tyler Townley yell at the top of his voice “POOOOOOAAAARRR! WHO FARTED??” Tyler was always yelling stuff out in class. Normally Ms. White would have told him off. She didn’t this time because she had her hand over her mouth and nose. She moved to the windows. She was trying to open them with her other hand. All the kids yelled and ran for the door. They pushed each other to try and get away from the super-fart.

  My friend Pani had a weak stomach. One sniff of the super-fart and he started to gag. It looked funny because he’s the biggest kid in our grade. He has a big head and it started to wobble around. His cheeks went puffy like he was going to be sick. I thought he looked like one of those bobble-head toys. I started laughing.

  Pani knew he was going to be sick. He started pushing all the other kids out of the doorway. He sort of did a swimming stroke. As his arms went over kids started flying out his way. Pani always talks funny because he’s from New Zealand. He can’t say ‘Miss’, he always said “Muss’ instead. He tried to tell Ms. White he was going to be sick. When he tried to speak though, he made that noise you make just before you are sick. “Muss……BLURRRR……, Muss White…….BLURRGG………I’m going to……BLUUURRRRRGHAAAARRR”. Pani threw up all over the other kids trying to get through the door. I laughed even more.

  The smell of Pani’s sick mixed with the smell of the super fart. The smell in the library got even worse. It was too much for Mrs. Butcher. She was our library teacher. She was scanning books behind her desk. She jumped over her desk screaming “Oh, my God”. She tried to push her way through the kids. At the back of all the kids was Dale Anderson. He is always at the back. He is a really nice kid, but he moves very slowly. People say he’s in his own world. His nickname is ‘Dordles’. Dordles was one of the unlucky kids to be covered in Pani sick.

  As Mrs. Butcher pushed passed Dordles the sick went all over her. She started to squeal. It didn’t sound like a normal girl squeal. She sounded like an opera singer. Her squeal started low and then got louder and squeakier. She started freaking out. She ran around on her tippy toes. She was flicking her hands like you do when you try to dry them. She was flicking sick everywhere. She was still squealing. She ran to one of the windows that Mrs. White had opened, and leaned out to get some fresh air. She must have leaned too far, because she fell out. I was shocked. She fell flat into a big rose bush outside the window. Her arms and legs were caught in the branches. She tried to get out but she was trapped. Her arms and legs were waving all over the place. Tyler pointed at her. “Look at Mrs. Butcher” he said “she looks like a puppet”. He ran to the window. He started pulling a rose branch up and down yelling “Wave Puppet! Wave!” Mrs. Butcher’s arm was moving up and down as he pulled the branch. She screamed even more. I started laughing even more. I was finding it hard to breathe.

  Katie Cook ran to her bag for her puffer. It helped her breathe. She looked very worried. I didn’t like Katie Cook Ever since she made it to the finals of Mini-Mastercook on TV she’s been all snobby. She didn’t win. Some kid cooked garlic snails and beat her. She made a chocolate cake that looked like a pyramid. She even made little chocolate people. She should of won, but the big fat judge liked the garlic snails better. Yuk. Who would eat garlic snails instead of chocolate cake?

  As the other kids made it outside, they were all coughing and gagging. Some kids fell on the ground and took deep breaths. Other kids kept running. One kid ran home. Some of the girls were crying. Pani ran onto the grass and kept being sick. Other kids just stood there looking shocked. One kid was rolling in the grass to get the Pani sick off him.

  The school nurse was looking out her window and saw a kid run out and roll on the ground. She thought he was on fire. She ran out of her office and threw a fire blanket over him. She started rolling him over. The kids in the other rooms ran to the windows to see what was going on. I laughed so hard my belly hurt.

  The principal Mr. Close came out of his office yelling “FIRE!”. He looked very worried. He had seen Mrs. Butcher jump out the window into the rose bush. He saw the school nurse rolling a kid in a fire blanket. He saw kids running and screaming. He thought the library was on fire. He ran over to talk to Ms. White. I couldn’t hear what they said, because the alarm had come on. I fell onto the grass in a laughing fit. Tears started running down my face.

  Kids came out of all the other classrooms and got into lines on the grass. We’d all practiced this in fire drills. I was still rolling around and laughing. I was in the spot where all the preppies should line up. They got all confused and started to wander off into the other lines. Pani had left a big pool of sick where the grade 5 kids should line up. One kid slipped over in it. The o
ther kids started moving away. All the lines got muddled up. The teachers didn’t know what was going on. They all started yelling at everyone to get back in line.

  I kept laughing. I laughed for so long I thought I would never stop. It hurt. Maybe I never would have stopped if Principal Close hadn’t picked me up by the back of my shirt. He looked very angry. I tried to look away from him. All I saw was more angry faces. Mrs. Butcher, the School Nurse, the prep teacher, a fire man, kids covered in sick and a kid wrapped in a blanket. They all looked angry. Except Ms. White, she still looked…um – sort of worried.

  Principal Close started to yell at me “Danny Porter, did you cause all this?” I wanted to tell him “No Sir”. I wanted to say “I didn’t do anything. I just think farts are funny”. Ms. White came over and stood next to me. I could smell her pink lolly smell. That didn’t help. I opened my mouth, but all that came out was “F-F-F-F-F-FARTS ARE F-F-F-F-FUNNY!” then I roared laughing again.

  Principal Close got very mad at me. I got in lots of trouble. In fact, the whole school was mad at me. Mr. Close thought I’d played some kind of joke. He thought I’d let off some kind of rotten gas bomb. He put me on cleaning duty for a month. This meant I had to help clean up Pani sick out of the library. It was horrible. I had to scrub the carpet with a scrubbing brush. The smell stayed in the library for about three days after that. Nobody could go in there. On top of that, all the kids at school thought I did the super-fart. Everyone started calling me Danny Farter instead of Danny Porter. There was nothing I could do. I started trying to think about how I could prove that I was not the super-farter.

  We could do a line up like they do in the movies. I could get in a line with a bunch of other people. We all fart and then someone smells them all. Then they would know that my farts are just normal stinky. All the kids would know that I’m not the super-farter. Mr. Close got even madder when I asked him about this. I kept my ideas to myself after that. I felt really bad.

  It wasn’t all bad though. When they rang my parents my dad answered the phone. When they told him what had happened he roared with laughter. He wasn’t mad at me at all. When he came and picked me up he was still laughing. He made me keep telling the story in the car on the way home. Each time he laughed even more. His eyes went all squinty. His body was jiggling like jelly. Every now and then he wiped a tear from his eye. He laughed so hard he swerved the car and nearly hit a rubbish bin. I stopped telling him the story after that. Later that night he made me tell it again, and he laughed just as much. Then on the weekend we had a barbeque. Dad’s friends were around. He started telling the story again, but he laughed too hard to get the words out. He had to hold himself up with one hand on the outside table to stop falling over. He rolled his hand at me to tell me to come over. “Ha ha ha ha har……finish…..telling…ha ha ha har”. I had to finish telling the story for him. All his friends thought it was hilarious too. None of this made me feel any better.

  I wasn’t the only kid affected by the super-farter. Pani felt really bad for being sick on everyone. Nobody would tease him because he’s too big. He’s probably the strongest kid in the school. I think he’d even beat Principal Close in an arm wrestle. I heard him say to one kid “Surry bout bein suck on yu bro. That smull was rutton tho, ay”. The kid just blinked a couple of times and walked off. I don’t think he understood what Pani had said. Pani came up to me to say sorry too. “Surry yu had to scrub up my suck Dinny.” I felt sorry for him. “It’s all good Pani” I said. “It’s the super-farter’s fault”.

  Tyler Townley got in lots of trouble too. He got in even more trouble than me. Making Mrs. Butcher into his own ‘puppet’ made Mr. Close and Mrs. Butcher really mad. They called his mum and dad. They had to come and get him too. He had to do yard duty every day for a month. Tyler was always in trouble, so he didn’t seem to mind very much.

  Dordles did not get in trouble, but a few kids picked on him because Pani spewed on him. Pani and I were walking past the playground. We saw a group of grade 4 kids standing around Dordles. They were teasing him. Pani got mad. He walked up and stood beside Dordles. “You blokes wuddn’t puck on me gud frund Dordles wud ya?”. They all just ran off. As they ran away I heard one of them say “What did he say?”. His friend replied “He said he was going to pull your arms off”. That was the end of Dordles’ bully problem. I liked being friends with Pani.

  Tyler saw it too. He came running over from yard duty. “That was awesome!” he said. “I think they poohed their pants”. Tyler was one of those crazy kids. He’d do anything. He was usually in some sort of trouble. But he was always funny. Then he screwed up his face and started to pretend he was doing a pooh. He squatted down and started making fart noises. “Oh, I’m a grade 4 dork, and I’m doing a giant pooh” he said. He stuck his tongue out and made more fart noises. He ran around in circles. Then he’d stop and pretend to do another pooh. He called out to the boys who were still moving away “I’m scared of Pani, so I’m doing a giant stinky pooh.” Pani and I laughed. A few seconds later Dordles laughed too. It took him a little while to work out what was funny.