Mamacita: I am really sensitive to odors. From pleasant aromas to soul-destroying stenches. . . I just can’t deal with strong odors. I’m a mom, so I do, but I don’t like it. However, I also deal with lots of people every day – classrooms full of students of all ages and from all kinds of backgrounds, and sensitivity to strong odors is something I have had to suppress for many years. How many? Ooh, look over there!
Okay, I’ll get to the point. Farts.
I am not a fan of the public fart. And by “public,” I mean doing it when others are present. An awful lot of people seem to think farts are hilarious and that the resulting stenches are laughable. I don’t, and I can’t.
I wish it were socially acceptable to wear one of these on my nose, especially on really hot days.
I don’t mind a light fragrance. I love flowers in the house. I wear a light cologne, myself.
But getting into the elevator with women who are wearing the entire stock of Dollar Tree cologne all at once is killing me. Equally stinky are the people wearing too many spritzes of Chanel Grant Extrait. It doesn’t matter how much you paid for your artificial scent – you stink.
Cheap or expensive: Equally stinky.
Even worse? People who spray themselves with scent to cover up the sad fact that they haven’t showered for a while. The combination of cheap strong cologne and dirty, sweaty bodies is a killer for me.
When you add the distinctive stench of the nicotine-addicted body to this equation, we have a time bomb, because guess what – the professor is close to jumping out of the window to get away from the smell.
However, that is a problem that isn’t on my top ten list, so I just breathe shallowly, grin, and bear it.
Whenever a lot of people are in a room, there will be odors. It’s really the way people are dealing with the odors that is the difference between class and classless.
But I digress. The topic is farts. Stinky, smelly farts. And people who think it’s okay, and even funny, to smell up a room with other people in it. Adults, even, who lift a leg and let it rip and laugh and expect others to laugh, too, and who mock anyone who doesn’t like it.
Inside my head every time someone farts where I am located.
Let me illustrate.
Differences between middle school students and college students, part 8,999:
One of my classrooms this semester has several chairs that make farty noises whenever someone shifts in the seat. The teacher’s chair is loudest of all. When I get up or sit down, the chair sounds like a drunk in a state park port-a-potty. When the students are writing, the room is silent except for the sounds of shuffling papers, scratching pencils or pens, and keyboard clicks.
And the occasional little ‘farty’ sounds when someone moves even the slightest little bit.
Fart sounds in the classroom, and not one student turns a hair about it. Imagine the reaction if my middle school students heard a farty sound, even one mild farty sound. Yeah, that. But at the college level? Meh.
I’m sure they do their fair share of belching and farting and otherwise gassing up the universe, but they don’t do it in the classroom, where others are also present. They don’t do these things in the presence of others. I compare the classroom to the workplace, where it is also not cool to let your body produce anything that negatively affects anyone else, however hilarious you might think it is. You leave and do it elsewhere, in an appropriate environment.
Coughcoughcoughrestroomcoughcough.
Here is where we do the stinky things our bodies need to do.
My college students understand this concept that seems to be so very difficult for others to comprehend.
I love my job.
But people who love to fart in public and expect everybody in the room to laugh? Not so much. Go ahead. Laugh. My family does.
My college students? In the classroom, at least, they gots class.
My 23 year old son loves to fart. Probably because I made such horrible faces when he did when he was a child. He actually texted me once a few years ago about how he cleared the library at his college. He’s a brilliant man, but still a boy at heart.