After Eddie Avalos mortified me with the “hand farting incident” I spent the next several days thinking about what I had witnessed in my front yard:
He fell down on the grass, put his legs up in the air, grabbed a lighter from his pocket, and I watched in utter amazement, as he cut a huge fart, flicked the lighter and suddenly shot a huge blue flame out of his ass. Then he laughed like a maniac and got up and ran away. It took me a moment to register what had happened. I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe.
I really couldn’t stop thinking about the whole scientific dynamic of the situation and wondered… how many people knew about this and how many people actually participated in it?
I knew I was REALLY behind the times with the “blue dart” when my friend Christy, who would never be as crude as me even on her worst day, said to me, “Lighting farts on fire? Oh yeah… people were doing that all the time at the YMCA camp when I worked there.”
I wondered what it felt like.
A blue dart.
I wanted to explore it but… the only person I could ask how to do it was Eddie and I didn’t want him to find out what I was up to… as we have already confirmed… it was SO unGIRL-like and Eddie was just waiting to bait me again…
“You know when you lit your butt on fire the other day?” I asked as we lay on the bed one afternoon… doing the usual… watching cartoons.
“Yeah,” Eddie said, not really paying attention enthralled with something on the TV that was much more interesting then our conversation.
“Does it hurt?”
He looked at me suspiciously.
“Why?” he asked.
I pretended to pick my fingernail and act bored.
“It just looked like it did,” I mumbled.
“You have to wear Levi’s,” he said as he wiggled his little sock covered toes and patted his jeans. “Otherwise you’ll burn all the hair off your ass.”
I made a face.
I didn’t have a hairy ass… I hadn’t even considered the whole hairy ass thing but that really added another dimension to the story in my imagination… and of course I couldn’t tell him we were talking about my ass…
“Eeeeew” I said as I slapped him and went back to watching TV.
A few days later, my friend Margie and her daughter Lily were over at the house.
I told them both about the whole fart incident and then I said, “I want to try a blue dart.”
Margie seemed pleased.
“Do it,” she said and then giggled.
I was wearing jean overalls that day and so I figured that would be okay.
I dug around in a drawer and found a book of matches.
“You think it will work with matches?” I asked.
Margie and Lily both shrugged their shoulders… they were blue dart virgins just like me… we didn’t know what the hell to do.
I climbed up on the bed and tried to put my legs up like Eddie.
I stayed in position for what seemed like forever but I couldn’t make anything happen.
I felt sweaty and confused.
The pressure to perform was getting to me.
Lily was watching me like I was the Finale at the BEST circus sideshow in the world… and Margie was looking on with quite anticipation mixed with skepticism … not sure if I had the skill to pull this off.
Finally, I felt something going on and I tried to light a match and put it next to my jeans but as soon as my hand got close… I shook the match out and put my legs down.
“Do it!” Margie shouted… it was like I had my own personal blue dart cheerleader and I knew I couldn’t let her down.
I mustered my courage and threw my legs back up in the air.
“Go!” She squealed.
I lit a match, pushed hard and a GIANT fart shot out of my ass.
I put the match directly onto the gas blast and watched as a HUGE blue flame exploded skyward and seemed to brighten the room.
I was amazed by the sheer magnitude of the size of it.
Margie and Lily’s eyes grew into large saucer shaped circles… their mouths tiny ooooooh’s of disbelief and excitement.
I was just about to start laughing when I felt my butt get really hot… scary hot… my face changed from one of total amusement to complete horror.
I FREAKED.
I was so afraid that I was going to catch on fire or explode from the inside, that I actually panicked and pee’d all over myself believing I was putting out the flame.
I rolled off the bed and ran to the bathroom, a large wet circle showing prominently on my crotch, crying as Lily and Margie laughed hysterically at my idiocy.
I slammed the bathroom door and sat on the toilet, my hands covering my face… laughing… as I listened to Lily and Margie giggling and going over the play by plays on the stellar entertainment I had just provided for them… quite pleased with the show.
I don’t think I ever told Eddie about this incident… but of course if he’s reading this… which I’m sure he is… he now knows.
I have never tried a blue dart since… I doubt I ever will again… but the sheer joy of doing something so taboo… breaking the “girl code” this time, by choice… left me feeling giddy with my accomplishment.
Dylan believes that Joe and I bordered on the edge of abusive while raising him.
Not physically… but mentally.
He seems to think games like “Goat Man” and “Sanctuary” and “Mean Mommy” and “I’m Blind” were meant to torment him, but we try to explain that they were just good fun or in some cases… meant to protect and educate.
Dylan was prone to taking off his clothes and running away when he was a baby so Joe, my X, invented “Goat Man” basically, “The Boogie Man” so that whenever Dylan ran away he could shout, “Goat Man! Goat Man!” and Dylan would scurry to the safety of the house. You don’t want your child running around the neighborhood naked. It may have been good fun back in the day, but now…. that’s a big no.
We didn’t think about the lasting effects of “Goat Man” … a monster that would now live forever in our child’s imagination. We just thought “Goat Man” would live until Dylan was old enough to understand that we created G.M. just to protect him. No… we were wrong. Dylan is now 22 years old and if I stood outside in the dark and yelled “Goat Man! Goat Man! Goat Man!” Dylan would still scream and scurry for the safety of the house afraid that a little hoof footed evil man was about to nab him in a matter of seconds.
“Mean Mommy” was one of my games and it was my way of letting Dylan know what was in store for him if he should so happen to cross the line and break Mommy’s rules. Any time he would do something terribly naughty, I would make crazy eyes at him, switch my voice into a high pitched tone and say, “Mean mommy” and Dylan would freak out and beg me to stop afraid that I had gone crazy and might kill him.
I was 26 when I invented this game, not much more of a baby myself… but I would still invent it again right now if it meant Dylan would turn into the great person that I believe him to be today.
So…. the day I invented “Sanctuary” I never thought anything would go terribly wrong…. I just thought it would be fun to beat Dylan with a yellow plastic stick ball bat while shouting “Sanctuary!” dragging my right leg behind me as I pretended to be the Hunchback of Notre Dame while Dylan scurried along the floor screaming “No Quasimodo! NO!”
We were half way through the living room, then rounding the corner of the hallway with Dylan crawling on his hands and knees, while I smacked his butt with the yellow plastic bat as he squealed and giggled with delight and tried to escape me.
At that time, we still had carpet in our home but it was old and worn and in some of the door frames, sharp carpet nails had become exposed due to the many years of heavy foot traffic.
Dylan rounded a corner to hide in a bedroom when the top of his fat, soft, pink baby Fred Flintstone foot, caught on one of the large sharp rusty nails which ripped his foot wide open.
He flipped over, covered his foot in shock and terror, little arms shaking in pain and anger before he looked up at me and screamed, “LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO ME!”
His face was that of ultimate betrayal.
I thought he was being overly dramatic until he removed his hand and I saw the damage: exposed meat and a fat gaping mouth of a wound.
Joe had come running when he heard the commotion and after seeing the injury, and then giving me a look that could have frozen hell, placed a clean towel over Dylan’s foot, carried him to the car and we rushed him to the emergency room.
They took us straight in and in a matter of minutes, Dylan was sitting on a hospital bed as they took our information and a nurse went to get the doctor.
When the doctor arrived, he asked that Joe and I take a seat in the chairs against the wall and wait while he spoke to Dylan privately. I did not know that this was normal practice, that doctors often speak to children alone to check for child abuse. A police officer from child protective services was also called in to listen. I’m not sure if they just hang out at the hospital waiting for these types of cases or if they called him in specially.
I could see Dylan’s little rounded back… he was still sniffling as children do after a hard cry and his shoulders would pulse up and down every few moments as he tried to catch his breath.
The doctor pulled up a chair and sat down facing Dylan. Because of our location, we could view the doctor’s face, the officer’s face… but nothing of Dylan’s expression.
The doctor said very calmly, “Dylan. Tell us exactly what happened.”
And Dylan replied in broken sobs, “My mom… was BEATING ME… with a Baaaaaattttt.”
You can’t even imagine the look on the doctor’s face… I don’t know if I can even describe it… he looked at me like I was the biggest moron in the world. I swear… it wasn’t a “You are obviously a child abuser” look it was a “How the hell did you come up with such a stupid game like Sanctuary Quasimodo you idiot?”
The child protective officer looked at Joe like he was the devil and I could feel shame radiate from Joe’s entire being before he looked at me and whispered, “We’re so going to jail.”
But we didn’t go to jail. We never went to jail for raising Dylan. They stitched up his foot and sent him home with the crazy woman and the devil after Dylan through broken sobs explained while having his foot stitched up that it was just a game… and that he loved his mom and dad very much.
Thank God.
I’m sure if Dylan is reading this now… he wishes he could go back in time and give us a taste of our own medicine. Maybe a game called, “Send Mommy and Daddy to Jail”
Sound good Dylan?
If you were to come to Long Beach, California. And… if you were to meet the many students I have taught… you would find that they have all been trained to remember two things:
1. That Ms. Wood wants to die in a way that is as entertaining as she lived and…
2. That they… my students… are to steal my body after my death, bring it to the top of the football bleachers (Which I have always been deathly afraid of falling down) and kick my body down the steps, roll it onto the football field, light it on fire, and shout “Valhalla!” dancing with glee, before they must run away… prior to the cops arrival at the scene. I have reiterated many times, that I prefer they wear political masks: George Bush, Bill Clinton, Margaret Thatcher… although Dick Cheney would be nice… but whatever they all agree on… is fine by me.
I swear that I am NOT exaggerating.
Go ahead.
Ask them.
Seriously.
They will say, my little educational minions, that, “Ms. Wood wants to be as entertaining when she dies as she lived and I’m to throw her down the football bleachers.” They may or may not say the word “Valhalla” correctly, but… someone from AP or Honor’s English will have written down the directions word-for-word in one of their highly organized little notebooks and saved it for years, just so the plan should go off, I imagine, without a hitch.
A+ for everyone!
Mortality is something I often like to remind them of… it’s just my way of keeping life in perspective. Just a couple of nights ago in fact, at graduation, they were all talking about how much they were going to miss me after they left school. “No you won’t,” I said. “Oh you say that now, but you will all go off into the world, begin to live your lives, and I’m the one that’s left behind. And then one day… you’ll think to yourself, I wonder what happened to Ms. Wood? and you’ll Google my name and find out that I’m dead.
“Nooooooooooo!” They all cried in horror, their shock at my statement palpable as I laughed hard and made jokes about how by the time I was ready to die, the genetic engineers of the world would have created some type of scientific wonder that would just surgically transplant my brain into a new younger version of my body. They sighed and giggled and seemed relieved to believe that I would live forever… but that’s just not the way the system works. You may think I’m being cruel teasing them… but honestly… I want them to keep the idea of “infinite” time in perspective.
So, it was no surprise that one day during Period Five, God decided to give me a taste of my own medicine.
We had been talking about civil rights beginning in the 1800’s with Thoreau… moving to the early 1900’s with Gandhi… and ending with MLK and Cesar Chavez’s civil rights work.
I had decided that it was imperative that they watched the film Gandhi and to my surprise, my students were actually into it.
They were all focused intently on the large movie screen… watching… silent… as I quietly sat in the back corner behind my desk enjoying an afternoon snack of salted almonds. I was mid-bite during a scene that showed Gandhi wasting away on one of his many well-known hunger strikes, when I choked and while sucking in a big breath of air to recover, actually lodged a salted almond in my windpipe. There was a moment of silent panic when I realized I really was choking and I was going to have to be Heimlich’d.
Now, something you must know about young adult education: any and all words or thoughts that resemble anything close to bathroom humor are remembered forever. So though we all appreciate the idea of the “Heimlich” maneuver in high school… “the hind lick” is of course, it’s comic counterpart.
Now, add that to the fact that Ms. Wood is in the corner, choking to death on “nuts” and you can see how this situation is becoming comically tragic. Even in my desperate moment of complete panic, I felt the world stop. Suddenly… my mind imagined a gigantic Jesus, shining in all of his glory, looking down at me with a wry smile on his face saying, “You wanted to be as entertaining in your death as you were in your life remember? Well, how do you like this scenario now, Sinner?”
My panic intensified.
Damn it.
Jesus was right.
Now I was going to be remembered as the teacher who “choked on nuts because the hind lick didn’t work.”
Fuck.
I rose quietly and quickly from my seat, as to not disturb my class, and rushed through the back of the room and slipped silently out the classroom door.
My room, a bungalow with a ramp and a rail leading up to it, led me to believe that if I could just get to the railing, I could Heimlich myself without disturbing my class and everything would be fine.
I readied myself as I held my fist tightly against my abdomen and jabbed upward several times sharply while slamming myself full force against the railing. After several seriously painful blows, the almond flew out onto the asphalt and I vomited the rest of my snack while hanging over the rail, drool dripping in long strings as I spit and worked to catch my breath.
When I looked up, I saw that there was a student standing out on the ramp of the bungalow across from mine, totally calm, not even disturbed by what he had just witnessed, texting rapidly to, I have no idea who but, being forever the teacher, afraid that I had just scarred a pupil for life, composed myself as I wiped my mouth and said, “Sorry about that. Are you okay?”
His head didn’t even come up from his task, “I’ve seen worse he mumbled.”
I shrugged my shoulders to myself thinking, Yeah… me too as we both stood there in silence for several moments… me recovering my composure and the student, intent on his work.
After a bit, I righted myself and moved towards the door.
“Hey,” the student shouted out. “What did you choke on?”
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Yes, I could have ignored him. I could have said any number of foods. But… I felt that I needed my suspicions confirmed and so… I answered honestly.
“Nuts,” I said.
He raised his head up from the text, trying to keep his amused expression from breaking before he laughed… which can only be described as a “Beavis and Butthead” guffaw, and said, “Nuts? I’m sorry Ms. Wood, but that’s fucking funny.”
I rolled my eyes and went back into my classroom where thankfully, Gandhi’s hunger strike was coming to an end, my students were totally engaged in the action on the big screen and still had no idea that I had exited the room, let alone almost just died, on the bungalow ramp.
And to be honest, if they had known, they would have been quite angry with me because I have made a deal with them. Yes… a deal. Basically, an amendment to the Ms. Wood Death Clause.
The amendment states: that if I die in the classroom, during class time, they are allowed to roll my dead body under the large table in the back of the room, hiding it, so that they can have a party “sans adults” until they have to report my death to the office at the end of the school day.
I think that’s fair.
I mean really… they should be allowed to unwind a bit if a teacher actually up-and-dies mid-class.
I walked back to my desk and thought… How beautifully ironic: Me, choking on nuts as Gandhi’s hunger strike comes to an end.
Could the story have been any better?
So at the end of the period, I broke down and knew that I had to share it. I told Period Five the truth and as I predicted they were totally in shock that all of this had happened during their class time and that they had missed it.
Of course… they also made me call Nurse Erlandson to make sure that I really was okay. She suggested that I might want to see the doctor after school to have my windpipe checked, which, I actually did.
And now, today, I wonder… is the moral of this story, “Be careful what you wish for?” or… “Stop eating so much, get a fucking clue, look at Gandhi?”or… “Be prepared… know the “Hind Lick?”
I’m not really sure… in the grand scheme of things maybe it really wasn’t a big deal: I’m just glad that today… I’m still here.
And what about the student who witnessed my near demise? Well, I spent the remainder of that year running into him in various odd locations of the campus; as if God was putting him in front of me purposely to remind me of my little prank.
Each time I would see him, he would wave, smile, as if we were the best of friends and then… just when he was whisper close he would say, “Nuts” and then giggle like an idiot as he shook his head and walked away.
I loved him for it: I truly did.
Little bastard.
Totally loved him.
THE WILD WORLD OF MRS. WOOD 