As Shaggy Once Sang...."It Wasn't Me"

I once took the blame for a girl’s flatulence.

Inadvertently, of course.

The incident in question occurred 22 years ago on one of many church youth group trips; I fell asleep in the van and, an hour or so later, awoke to a silence that can only be described as both awkward and contemptuous.

Amid stifled giggles from the other passengers in the van (all female except 3), I begged in vain to be let in on the joke; only later did I learn through a friend the story behind the botched car ride: Only minutes after I had fallen asleep the "slightly" overweight girl seated next to me let loose what many referred to for years to come as a “machine gun fart that could singe nostril hairs.” Now, at my age, I find fart references to not be funny or amusing but keep in mind I am reminiscing and I must give you the facts. You laughed didn't you? Moving on.

Being soundly (and innocently) dozing, not only did I miss the hilarity of the incident itself but I also got blamed entirely, with my obese fellow traveler having apparently immediately fingered me as the culprit. My reputation among the girls of the church youth group, sadly, was irreparably damaged, and I was forced thereafter to search elsewhere for romantic possibilities, not to mention that I missed the fantastically rare sighting of the fabled female flatulent itself.

This incident itself did not, as it may seem, damage my psyche; I do not lose sleep at night fretting about how forty girls forever will remember me as Brad, the kid who, while catching forty winks, let loose the foulest of faux pas. However, this type of unearned guilt has been a theme throughout much of my life.

I briefly dated, as much as one can date while young enough to necessitate a parent to chauffeur you to and fro, a cute girl who ultimately broke my heart because she had heard through the grapevine that I’d been bragging to my friends about getting to “third base” with her. I protested - not only had I not been spreading such rumors, but even if I had managed to make my way into this girl’s nether regions (which I hadn’t), I wouldn’t have had the slightest clue how to proceed. So, I continued protesting heavily, swearing up and down on the lives of a number of relatives (sorry Mom) to my innocence, but she dumped me just the same.

One year or so later, a cop showed up at my parents door asking for me. Apparently, three of "The Boyz" I ran with in the neighborhood had went through on the plan to pick every leaf off Ms. McKinnis' Crape Myrtles and put them in her pool out back. This was a revenge mission reciprocated from her yelling at us (then calling the cops) for riding 4-wheelers up and down the street. The cops had yet to find any hard evidence that I was a part of this master plan (as I wasn't) other than Ms. McKinnis saying "I saw three kids running from my side yard and one was fat and the other two were skinny." Okay, lets just say I wasn't a vegetarian growing up but holy cow that's just plain shallow and discriminatory. But, as it came to pass, the other fat kid in the neighborhood was already on probation for stealing street signs so "The Boyz" implicated me as to not get him in any more trouble. I spent approximately 3 hours a month outside that spring. One hour a month cleaning her yard and the other two were split from going to and coming home from church and school. Though such accusations were entirely untrue, my claims of innocence fell once again on deaf ears.

Easily the most damaging, and by default, the most memorable incident occurred during my seventh grade year of middle school.

At some point, at least one and perhaps several guys in my class decided it would be wildly funny to bring some porn magazines to school and plaster upon the walls of bathrooms the pictures contained within. To their defense, it probably would have been funny, except for two crucial mistakes: First, “some” turned out to be somewhere near fifty magazines, and second, these magazines were filled with the filthiest, raunchiest, most hardcore photographs that, to this day, I have ever seen. Boys being boys, the pictures were immediately pulled off the walls of the bathrooms and passed around all day, the episode occurring during my gym class, where some chap with nerves of steel managed to paste up an entire centerfold not just in plain view but along the girls track route.

My memory is somewhat hazy, but I believe it took somewhere along the course of seven seconds for the girls to alert the gym teacher that, unlike their normal routine, they were now jogging past a poster of a fully nude transvestite spanking an obviously excited man dressed as a baby who, for some particularly odd reason, was licking perhaps the world’s largest lollipop. The poster was immediately removed (with prejudice), and stern warnings were delivered to all the boys present.

Less than an hour later, the loudspeaker in my classroom erupted to life, demanding that I march down to the principal’s office for a “chat.” As it turned out, I didn’t have to go very far; upon stepping into the hallway, I spotted the principal, the vice-principal, and several other school administrators, gathered around my locker, which, though I was sure I’d locked snugly earlier that morning, was now wide open.

There are certain mysteries in life - things “to ask when you get to the Pearly Gates,” as my grandmother says - and this is definitely number one or two on my list, for as I approached the group huddled intently around my belongings, I noticed a single magazine perched upon my books, leaning upon my brown Tupperware lunch pal. It was clear that the majority of the pages had been ripped out, but enough of the publication remained to give a very coherent representation of the subject matter.

This spelled instant guilt for yours truly, although the principal, wanting to inflict particularly cruel justice on a kid who, I have to admit, was one of the most well-behaved in the school, chose an alternative punishment. Instead of smacking my backside with a paddle the size of a row boat oar, suspending me, or even telling my parents (who are, as far as I know, still unaware of the entire matter), I was simply forced to march back into my classroom holding said magazine for all to see, hand it to the teacher, and apologize. And not just to the teacher, to my classmates.

No amount of denial could ever, ever convince the ladies of that school that I was not the actual culprit. My pleadings that, by using simple math, it was plain as day that one magazine could not possibly have produced the staggering number of pictures that were found and confiscated, likewise fell on deaf ears.

So goes the stories of injustice in a young man's life. Lessons learned. In closing, I will say this - The next time a lady lets one slip near me, you’re on your own.