The Great Farting Epidemic

Darryl O’Callaghan was an acknowledged master of the surreptitious fart, a fact which alone was sufficient to earn him virtual celebrity status among most of the rest of the boys in the class. However, his talents did not end there. A decade before the emergence of punk rock Darryl was impressing his classmates with his idiosyncratic penchant for adorning various parts of his body with safety pins, which he somehow managed to insert into his flesh without either flinching or drawing blood. Perhaps, I pondered, recalling an episode of Lost In Space (or was it Star Trek?), Darryl was not actually a boy at all, but an android……..

On those days when the wind was low, Darryl would compensate to some degree by generating loud, authentic-sounding fart noises via the time-honoured technique of placing a cupped hand under his naked armpit and swiftly and energetically bringing his arm down to his side. This was guaranteed to infuriate Sister Mary Vincent, although she seldom if ever managed to identify the miscreant.

Not that Darryl was always so fortunate. In academic terms, he was what might most charitably be termed an under-achiever, a state of affairs which nowadays would almost certainly lead to his being provided with remedial help of some sort. As far as the Sisters of Mercy were concerned, however, there was only one cure for stupidity, which to harass, brutalise and flay it into oblivion. As an incentive to our intellectual growth, Sister Mary Vincent would declare, “Now, children, it’s time for a spelling test. I expect you all to achieve a mark of at least six out of ten. Boys who get five out of ten or less will be smacked – one smack for five out of ten, two smacks for four out of ten, three smacks for three out of ten, and so forth. Any boy who gets nought out of ten” – and she would almost invariably stare meaningfully in Darryl’s direction at this point – “will have the pleasure of half a dozen first hand encounters with Sister Mary Paul’s cane during tomorrow morning’s assembly.” And she would lick her in truth almost invisible lips in anticipatory relish. “Girls,” she would then say, “will not, of course, be smacked, but will do an equivalent number of recess detentions instead.”

Darryl, who seldom managed more than one or two out of ten in any test, whether spelling, dictation or mental arithmetic, received his repeated thrashings with the same equanimity and easy-going grin as he bore his self-inflicted safety pin wounds.

Darryl’s trend-setting proclivities also extended to the realms of style and fashion. Presumably bored with using his legs as surrogate pin cushions, he was the first boy in the class to progress from wearing shorts to long trousers. Perhaps even more significantly, he was also the first boy in our class to take up smoking. I am not sure exactly when this was, but by the time he was in grade five he was a hardened chain smoker – when out of the classroom, of course. By this time, several other boys in the class had also started smoking, but Darryl’s head-start was such that, in terms of noticeable side-effects, he was already well into the home straight.

As a ten year old, Darryl had a voice reminiscent of Hollywood actor Lee Marvin, albeit with an Australian accent. Indeed, his pronouncements were typically so deep and gravely in tone that their content, which seemed to consist almost exclusively of words like ‘smokes’, ‘woofters’ and ‘frenchies’, usually uttered with a feeble, almost self-effacing guffaw, seemed irrelevant.

The mere mention of ‘frenchies’ was enough to make any self-respecting male in grade five degenerate into fits of helpless giggles, irrespective of whether they had any clear notion of the nature of the object in question. Most, I suspect, did not. In my own case, as someone who had no idea what an erection was, let alone how penetrative sex occurred, the word ‘frenchy’ was just inherently funny, without any reference to its alleged meaning. Similarly, words like ‘dildo’, ‘pufter’, ‘wanker’, ‘cunt’ and ‘prozzie’ had the undeniable effect of tickling you onomatopoeically in a way that disclosure of meaning would perhaps have undermined.

Almost uniquely, Darryl’s popularity among his peers did not depend, even in part, on any kind of athletic prowess. Indeed, he openly eschewed all forms of physical activity with the exceptions of lighting up, belching, creating farting noises in the way described above, and, of course, and most especially, farting itself. I can not recall ever seeing him so much as breaking into a trot, let alone running. When forced to participate in football matches his sole apparent intention appeared to be to get, and stay, as far away from the ball as possible (which if he could manage it meant the nearest toilet for a sly smoke).

Despite this wilful indolence, however, Darryl O’Callaghan was arguably, with the possible exception of football and cricket captain Gary Walker, the single most respected boy in the class.

That popularity and esteem reached its peak in grade five during what, in hindsight, came to be known as the Great Farting Epidemic. Inspired by Darryl’s example, virtually all the boys in the class endeavoured to develop prowess in the skill of letting one rip both odorifously and unobtrusively. When, as sometimes happened, particularly in the first half an hour or so after lunch, fifteen or twenty boys more or less simultaneously felt constrained to alleviate their colic in the tried and trusted fashion, the result was sublimely, indescribably asphyxiating.

Sister Mary Vincent, who beneath her carefully concocted veneer of assurance was actually quite a confused and disappointed soul, would wrinkle up her nose, and her facial expression would oscillate back and forth between bemusement and irritation, as she instinctively looked for someone to blame, and hurt. “Open some windows please children,” she would say, sniffing repeatedly as though endeavouring to convince herself that she was not imagining things. “We seem to have acquired a quite unpleasant odour from somewhere.”

If for nothing else, Darryl O’Callaghan deserves to be remembered with esteem bordering on veneration for his feat in forging a workable ongoing alliance between boys of very disparate personalities and ideals, not to mention digestive systems. This achievement, which was almost wholly incidental in that it derived, not from any overt act of will, or from strength of character – for, if Darryl had any character, it was virtually indiscernible – but from the inherent urge which all human beings possess, at least initially, to ride the crest of the prevailing wave, rather than be overwhelmed by it.

Darryl presumably died many years ago, most likely from lung cancer. However, imperturbable epicurean that he was, he will no doubt have done so in a happy frame of mind, with the flavour of his last consoling drag still massaging both his taste-buds and the underlying sense of angst that being human generates.