The old adage goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” and nowhere is that perhaps more true than with one Georgia teacher’s invention: the “fart corner.”
That’s not a euphemism. It is indeed a corner one goes into to release a little gas.
But, like many pioneering inventions and technological breakthroughs, it is dividing — and at times clearing — the proverbial room.
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According to NBC San Diego, second-grade teacher Candy Sydney-Browning had about enough of her students’ inability to control their gas.
“I have a very weak stomach, so I cannot take it,” Sydney-Browning told TODAY. “And so I was like, OK, I’m just gonna create this little area over here, and you just get up, you go over there, do your business, come back, and that’s just it.”
Boom. Fart corner.
The “Gusty Winds Area” is stocked with Febreze (veteran move) and gives innocent bystanders a significant buffer zone from wayward odors.
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But is this a good idea? I mean, are kids so coddled today that they don’t understand the kind of intestinal fortitude it takes to hold a gasser in for several periods because you don’t want it to escape in front of the girl you have a crush on in your biology class?
While some see it as a way to normalize a bodily function — by the way, why does everything have to be normalized? — fart corners are not winning over those with an old-school view on public flatulence.
I think fart corners are a slippery, rather foul-smelling slope.
Ripping one in front of the class is something that will haunt you for the rest of your life. I could rattle off several names of my grade school chums who did it, but I’m not going to because I’m a gentleman.
So, I think while this teacher’s heart is in the right place, that stigma will still be there, just in a different form.
No longer will they be the “smelly kid who farted in class,” but instead they’ll be the “smelly kid who is constantly getting up to use the fart corner to the point that everyone else is like, ‘Seriously, what the hell does that kid eat? Nothing but baked beans and kimchi?!'”
