Jackie: Year 8 Champion Farter, Girls Division

Today a girl farted in my lesson and laughed so hard that she fell out of her chair.

And, dear reader, I must be honest. I don’t think I’ve ever felt a clearer sense of vocation than I did right there. I am 100% meant to be working with children.

It was during an ICT lesson, so it wasn’t the sort of thing done to interrupt a lesson. All the kids were getting on with their work. I saw this girl was giggling a bit, and her friend called me over. Without any kind of warning to brace myself, I entered into a new level of stench just as the friend announced, “Miss, Jackie farted!” At which point Jackie turned bright red and completely lost her shit (not literally, thank God!), and before I knew it she was convulsing with laughter on the floor. This angelic, well-behaved and intelligent young woman was reduced to a hilarious mess on the floor by a single fart.

“Yes, child,” I wanted to say to her. “Just yes. Clearly you understand what is truly amusing in this world. I have nothing left to teach you. Your education is complete. Go forth and be awesome.”

These kids are just so amazing. This champion farter is just the tip of the iceberg of awesomeness. Sometimes they horrify me, but mostly they just say the most delightfully bizarre shit. And I mean “shit” in the wonderful sense.

One girl decided that the British Empire was not the result of a desire for power or money, but rather a desire to acquire a bunch of lands with strange names like Swaziland. Another girl wrote a letter to her husband fighting in the trenches of World War I and confessed her affair with the milkman. Another kid created a new religious TV character who was a vampire and a Christian, someone who begged his victims for forgiveness right before draining them of all their blood. Another boy argued that Christians should be in favor of cloning because then we could resurrect Jesus, clone him, and then “we could all have our own personal Jesus.” And then there’s the Year 8 child who doesn’t say awesome things but just looks like Edward Scissorhands, minus the scissorhands.

Man, I’m going to miss these kids when I leave this school at the end of next week. I am genuinely worried that the kids at my next school won’t be as strange and wonderful as the ones I adore at this school.

Oh God. I just got all soppy and sentimental over a fart.

Sam's brush with greatness

Two days ago I had the surreal experience of showing a famous academic where the bathroom was. My college was hosting some conference on churches or theology or some other thing that presumably means something to God but not much to anyone else, and so our house was invaded by a sea of obese and religious Europeans. So as I’m wading through a crowd of well-fed Europeans so I can get to tea and cake on time and I’m silently cursing all of them for delaying my cake eating, a woman stops me and asks, “Do you know where the toilets are?”

I rather lazily pointed in the direction of the bathroom, and as I did I caught sight of her name tag. Holy crap. “Jane Doe.” I’ve read her stuff. My tutor has mentioned her almost as many times as he’s mentioned trees, and if you know anything about my tutor you’ll know the man loves himself some trees. OH MY GOD. Jane Doe said “toilets” to me! I helped Jane Doe have a (I’ll assume) successful bowel movement!

I wish I hadn’t just lazily pointed. I should have escorted her. I should have shown her Lambeth Palace, which is what I’ve started calling the handicapped bathroom that is about twice the size of my bedroom and that has fine soaps that the regular bathroom doesn’t have, which I guess is supposed to make people feel a little better about being handicapped. Then again, I’m fine with just lazily pointing. After all, bitch got between me and cake.