MOST EMBARRASSING...

How could anybody's most embarrassing moment have anything but a fart in it...or, in my case a number of farts.

When I was in school, I never completed a full school year at any one school, or at least that is how I remember it. When you move that much, it is hard to make friends, or keep friends or even fit in on any level. When you are also stuck in the system of poverty, alcoholism, and total family dysfunction, isolation becomes your best friend.

That world worked out fine, most of the time. Occasionally. though, I would end up in a foster home or some other kind of placement that required socialization on some level or another. At this particular time, I was in about the fourth grade...approximate, since trying to remember exactly what year it was is next to impossible. I was in a foster home that was close to the swamp in Florida...outside of Jacksonville Beach. At that time, there wasn't the development that there is now and there was quite a bit of wild land out there.

Palmetto bushes would cut you to shreds if you weren't careful. Bugs would eat you alive. The skanky smell of the swamp would embed itself in your nasal cavities and you had to be pretty tough to develop a tolerance for it. At this particular home, "Go outside and get yourself some fresh air, girl," was a daily order. All I wanted to do was find some place to hide and read and escape from the reality of life. (A talent I still use to this day...coupled with the magic of the internet!)

Outside, I would go. Sometimes I could sneak away and find a place to hunker down and hide from the enforced socialization. More often than not, however, I found myself with a group of kids who loved to play the game of "Mess with the new Kid." Guess who was the new kid?

There we were playing in the swamp, running up the trunks of fallen trees covered with slimy moss and who knew what other slimy shit there was out there. My feet were not as toughened as theirs were. Running through the brush, I had to bite my tongue to keep from showing how much of a wimp I was. I had avoided running up the tree trunk, it looked like it required more physical dexterity that I had. After being goaded, dared and finally threatened, I took my turn at it.

Approximately half way up, I slipped...arms and legs out, I fell flat upon the trunk with my chest and fell over the side to the ground on my back...and I had knocked the breath out of myself. Like a turtle on its back, I lay there gasping and thrashing and looking up into the filthy faces of about eight grinning ten year olds...

When, it happened. The convulsions from attempting to catch my breath apparently activated my body's desire to exchange air and the only end that was working was the asshole end. There I was, with every flop of my body a fart escaped and the kids guffawed. I thought I was going to die and that this was going to be the humiliating exit that the fates had thrust upon me. Actually, by this time I was hoping I would die.

As luck would have it, my breath finally returned and I regained control of my symphonic asshole and sped off towards any available hole to crawl into. I remember swearing to myself that friends just weren't worth it, humiliation was not something anyone with a sane mind would ever choose and the road to introversion was set in stone.

Also set in stone were years of constipation and gas as I became absolutely convinced I could live with nothing ever leaving my body involuntarily. Today, let's just say, don't pull the finger...grandsons give more freedom than years of reasoning ever could.