When I signed up to become a teacher, I knew more or less what it entailed. My holidays were suddenly relegated to the summer time. No matter what is happening in my personal life, I cannot let that show in the classroom. And occasionally, body functions become a (not so) silent member of the class.
Two months ago, a protein bar I had eaten caused an unexpected – yet loud and continuous – grumble in my stomach. One of the women in class suggested I visit the bathroom. I tried to explain, but it was no use. A few years ago, a lingering stomach flu caused me to completely change my classroom behavior. That is, I normally walk around class and squat or kneel next to students to get or give feedback. During this class, with a bug shooting around my innards like a pinball, I sat at the front, gave instructions, held the back of a chair and maintained. My feedback contained mostly: ‘sure, sounds good. Stay over there.’
Today, the question is straight up Shakespearean: to prd or not to prd. Prd means fart in Czech, and since I hate the word fart (the way others feel about moist and panties), it will be heretofore referred to as prd.
See, the prd is a tremendous bodily function. Unlike its expellant cousins, the sneeze or the cough, it’s regarded as a major social faux pas if done in a public place. The smaller and more enclosed that place – like, say, a classroom – the worse it is regarded by those who didn’t do it. And this is why it can be tricky for a teacher who has to be in a classroom with six students for 8 hours on a Saturday and who on Friday dined on prunes and cabbage.
Getting older is great in a lot of ways. Saying ‘no, thank you’ to invitations without offering an excuse feels so good it should be illegal. Going to bed early, recalling the actual 1990s, your doctor talking to you as if your chums.
With the good comes the bad. I am stiff and sore for a full day after workouts. If I don’t write something down immediately, it disappears like it does for that poor fellow in Memento. (I will start tattooing my body in shopping and to-do lists.) There’s also the rising list of medicine. I am not on any prescribed medicine yet, but I do take a bunch of supplements and vitamins to help my fifty-something body run smoothly and not crumble like an empty egg carton.
Due to this, my day is punctuated by vitamins. Creatine and vitamins B and D and a baby aspirin in morning. In the evening, omega-3, magnesium, and zinc. These are suggested for old(er) dudes to keep alert, mobile, and alive.
Last week, prunes joined the daily diet when my body suddenly decided it no longer wanted to rid itself of waste. (see above: getting old body changes). I spent a day or two uncomfortable and then prunes and magnesium came to the rescue. They really are a wonder of nature – as an osmotic laxative, they bring water into the intestines and gently guide everything out. I now know why prune juice is a staple in every old(er) person’s fridge.
The side effect of this wonder fruit is that you can get a wee bit gassy. ‘A wee bit’ here means that you will lose 4 pounds of body weight an hour.
Enter irony. The day after I eat these prunes, I am forced to be in a classroom from 9–17 with 6 students. Now, ideally, when the pressure comes, I can step outside while they work on a task and discreetly crop dust the empty hallway like an American plane in Northern Laos in 1968. But alas, no. What I have developed is a case of the ‘seeing-eye’ prd. It builds with an unignorable pressure when I’m standing in front of six students, but once I get to a private area it has receded into the inner uh bowels of my particular temple. The regularity in which this occurs throughout my first two classes suggests my prd is a sentient being.
If you’ve ever tried to rid your body of gas within a limited time period. In a hallway. At work. You know the sort of yoga-palates-gymnastics your lower body engages in to expel the demons. I bend, I twist, I raise a leg, I raise the other. I squat (geeeently). I do cat-cow. I do one move which pits my upper body to the right and my lower body to the left so that it looks as though I’m trying to do magic. Because I am trying to do magic. Nothing works. I resign myself to a day of holding it in and then one big epic cleansing on my balcony later, perhaps while singing in a falsetto voice and openly weeping.
In class three, I sneeze. The students don’t seem to understand my face of genuine relief after the sneeze. My nose itches. I find that I am rubbing away the itchiness more and more, then I go for my itchy eyes. All at once it dawns on me. I look outside to confirm that it is a beautiful, warm, sunny, pollen-filled day. Seasonal allergies!
The sneezes – explosive, fully satisfying sneezes – come pretty regularly for a while and I would hand over everything in my wallet for a Benadryl. Every sneeze is precursored by a lower body clinch, a battening down of my colonic hatches.
By class 4 out of 5, from the sweated depths of a flatulatory-denial, I begin to wonder if I’m being taught a cosmic lesson. There’s no other way to explain it. Job gets swallowed by a whale, Saul gets blinded off his ass – both were taught perspective.
My opinion: nothing could make a full Saturday of teaching worse.
The universe: Wanna bet?
Outcome: checkmate.
I don’t feel proud about what happens on the bus. It’s warm outside, so 1 or 2 windows are open. I stand on my own in the dodgy metal hallway created by connecting two buses, trying to make myself look like a person who should be avoided. I sneeze and I act sick. I wait. Relief comes and comes and comes. Though there are other spots to stand and I look like a sick person, the Czechs do not heed my warning and stand right on top of me. Sometimes I think they would do a selfie in front of a sign that reads: Danger Crocodiles.
I can’t worry about innocent bystanders anymore. The universe might have taken me down, but these bus people are going down with me.
