13-year-old kicked off bus for cutting the cheese! Good call?
A 13-year-old Ohio boy and his buddy lost their bus-riding privileges for a day for farting on the school bus.
James Nichols and Kristine Kuzora are upset the school ruled their son’s passing gas as an “obscene gesture.”
“Canal Winchester Middle School officials cited the boys for making an obscene gesture in violation of the student code of conduct in revoking their rides to school Friday.”
“The bus driver had warned the boys a few weeks ago after another joint gas attack, so they apparently were designated repeat offenders and handed one-day bus suspensions, Nichols said.”
The vice principal told Nichols his son “should hold his gas on this hour-long bus ride, if in fact he has gas.”
Anyone who has spent anytime at all with children, tween, teens or college-age boys knows that farting is a major part of their social interaction. I simply don’t believe that the bus driver could hear or smell the gas on a full bus of middle school kids. Kids smell by the end of the day and are loud. Now if the farting and subsequent laughing and joking got the kids out of control then I could see where that is potentially a safety issue for the bus driver. But can the farting kids be blamed for the crowd’s reaction? I’d like to see that one argued.
I tutor little fellows all the time and routinely they pass gas while we are reading. I just ignore it and keep right on trucking through the paragraphs.
So what do you make of it? Should passing gas be punished at all at school or on the bus? Has zero tolerance gone too far?
Do you punish for farting at home?
– Theresa Walsh Giarrusso, ajc.com Momania. I have increased my Twitter activity. I am sending out great stories for moms each day focusing on health, fitness, sex, entertainment, food, travel and obviously parenting! So follow me on Twitter at @AJCMOMania!)
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
106 comments Add your comment
DB
May 13th, 2011
1:08 am
As with any bodily function over which one has little control, someone else passing gas is one of those things that should simply be ignored — and children should be taught that these functions are best ignored, or, if they can’t be ignored, a simple “excuse me” is in order. I can sorta see the bus driver’s point, if the kid’s were deliberately trying to pass gas and incurring raucous amusement from the other kids to the point that the distraction became an issue. And yeah, I can definitely see two young teenagers deliberately engaging in a tooting contest — one, because it’s a contest that little boys find hard to resist, and two, the laughter of the other kids would only encourage a certain personality type (i.e., the one that finds passing gas to be amusing). Crass little beasties, until they get some civility pounded into them. :-)
I’m not one of those people who happen to think that passing gas is “funny.” It has no amusement value whatsoever, no more so than urinating, defecating or regurgitating. Perhaps it should have been listed in yesterday’s list of “manners to teach your children by the time they are 9″ — “Bodily functions are not a source of amusement, and should not be treated as such.” Passing gas at home wasn’t punished — but it wasn’t rewarded with attention, either.
On the other hand, the idiot who told the kids that they should “hold their gas” for an hour is beyond stupid. The next time he has to urinate, someone should tell him to just hold it for an hour. A true involuntary gaseous emission cannot be controlled, any more than a hiccup.
Jeff
May 13th, 2011
2:06 am
This is stupid. The boy (don’t get me started on the issue of if it was a girl) is maybe in the 6th grade. Kids cut up and screw around. Maybe it was a joke, maybe it was legit. But I can tell you this, the physical act itself is about diet. As a grown man who has outgrown “mom’s” high fat velveeta, fried pork chop diet, my physical functions and my physical conditioning changed when i took control of my own diet and exercise habits.
If this is all they have to worry about, good deal. Sorry, but I couldn’t sleep and I love you guys.
Old Sandra
May 13th, 2011
6:21 am
All little boys “toot” and think it is funny. The smellier and louder it is the funnier they find it. Also, some kids can’t help being smellier than others. My youngest son has an internal problem and therefor “toots” a lot and wow is it smelly. He always finds it gut busting when we all order him out of the room with the instructions that he is to be smell free before he can come back because we don’t want him to drag it around everywhere. He personally can’t help himself as because of his internal problem. He once went 4 weeks without being able to go poo. At those times we were happy that he could “toot” because it was such a relief that something ….. anything was able to get out. So I personally would go absolutely ape if his school (don’t really have school buses here) punished him for letting one out. Schools should not be able to regulate bodily functions.
W-T-F
May 13th, 2011
7:05 am
Must be a REAL slow news day if you feel this topic even warrants your column. Next!
shaggy
May 13th, 2011
7:07 am
Really, it depends on the “pose” that the boys had assumed.
Was the fart-weapon pointed in the bus driver’s “general direction”, like the Frenchmen taunting King Authur’s knights in “Monty Python’s-The Holy Grail”? Those Frenchmen also launched a cow at the kinghts, so that “pose” could be construed as threatening.
If the farts were “silent and violent”, just how did the the bus driver gather the necessary evidence to convict? I guess he could have checked their underwear, but that’s a sure child abuse charge, investigation, and subsequent jail time, so I am guessing he just used olfactory information, combined with historical data.
The offending gases could been “pointed” at other kids, which is many times the case. A well known tactic is for the offender to sit directly on the face of the intended victim. This aggressive fart move is often used by older brothers on their younger male or female siblings, which results in the younger one crying to mommy. However the younger one will be too embarassed to admit, even to mommy, that his big brother farted on him, so mommy will get the trusted, “he hit me”, lie. This lie also satisfies the no ratting clause, which big brothers usually enforce mercilessly.
Then. there is the common “lunchroom valve release” that is not only necessary, but required, because holding “lunchroom valve emmisions” in could actually cause the child to explode. These must be excused as almost first aid, however the kid must say the proper thing, “that fart is better out than in” would be an acceptable response.
The most dangerous pose is the illegal, because students aren’t allowed lighters at school or the bus. That one, while still possible, would be very obvious, because the boys would be seen with their legs wide open in the air, with a hand clutching the lighter, as is trying to set their pants seat on fire. It is often followed by llitle boys saying things like, “CoooL, My Turn, and Hey It Didn’t go out!”.
There is currently groundbreaking (or maybe the proper term is “windbreaking”) research into the possibility of harnessing these farts, which along with cow farts, would make the United States energy independent. These high school student funded research efforts, project that we would also be able to unplug the nuclear plants too after plugging into the natural gas. All it takes is switching the customary breakfast from bacon, eggs, etc…, to one rich in beans, even chili would work.
I hope that this little boy, “fart thesis” has been educational and relevant to this discussion.
catlady
May 13th, 2011
7:11 am
Well, I agree with the decision, even allowing that we don’t know everything. There ARE kids who do this just for fun. They probably HAD made an obscene game out of it. For those of you who are defending them, you need to spend some time around “intentional farters”–my EXhusband was one!
Reminds me of: My mom was a high school teacher who taught psych and soc to juniors and seniors. One boy persistently slept. One day, one of his classmates said, “Ms. M, Trevarious farted again.” To which my mom replied, “Well, at least he has made a contribution to the class today!”
catlady
May 13th, 2011
7:15 am
Some kids can fart or burp the lines to songs. Did you know that?
Old School
May 13th, 2011
7:21 am
There’s always much more to the story than gets reported. Many parents believe “kid truth” and become deaf to any other statements. “Kid truth” contains truth slanted to the child’s advantage and peppered with quite a bit of “it wasn’t my fault.” The adult and the other kids have their own versions and the REAL truth lurks somewhere in the middle.
That being said, I think a simple relocation of the offender to the front seat and away from his buddies might have been a better move. They had been warned before about similar actions.
Bob
May 13th, 2011
7:21 am
Would it have been better if the boy passed a silent but deadly in the bus? So silly!
DINK (Dual Income, No Kids)
May 13th, 2011
7:25 am
shaggy
May 13th, 2011
7:07 am
Funniest Blog Post ever!
Pale Light & Fizzy
May 13th, 2011
7:29 am
He cut the cheese or grated the cheese? What kind of cheese?
I’m with W-T-F…..Slow news day equals this?
Let's Get Real
May 13th, 2011
7:33 am
It’s not about the gas. It’s about the disruption these boys were causing. Passing gas was just the means through which they could get all the other students on the bus stirred up. See it for what it is. The harm in it occurs when the driver – who is in charge of the safety of all the students while they are on his/her bus – is distracted while trying to drive. The boys had done this in the past and I’m sure were warned they would lose their bus privileges (note: privilege, not a right) if the behavior continued. They continued. And good for the driver for following up on the warning.
Pale Light & Fizzy
May 13th, 2011
7:38 am
Coming Monday:
Should paper airplanes be banned in school? They can be disruptive and worst of all, could put an eye out!
lulu
May 13th, 2011
7:42 am
I’ve taught kids with behavior problems who intentionally fart to be disruptive, so while I think it’s ridiculous to tell a child not to pass gas when they might need to, I know that sometimes disciplinary action is necessary.
shaggy
May 13th, 2011
7:49 am
Let’s get Real,
I am betting that you had a big brother and spent some “involuntary” (probably the dreaded scissor hold) time staring at the seat of his pants.
justmy2cents
May 13th, 2011
7:51 am
LOL @ Shaggy
shaggy
May 13th, 2011
7:52 am
Pale Light & Fizzy, W-T-F, etc…
You came. You posted. No one cares.
Pale Light & Fizzy
May 13th, 2011
7:53 am
You seemed to care as you felt compelled to respond.
Pull My Finger
May 13th, 2011
7:56 am
PFFFFFTTTTTT!!!!!
catlady
May 13th, 2011
7:56 am
Point for Shaggy!
Pale Light & Fizzy
May 13th, 2011
7:58 am
Just one point? Seems Shaggy ragged on two people.
Photius
May 13th, 2011
8:02 am
Rather than boys farting, how about Mom’s who rip ‘em?
Let's Get Real
May 13th, 2011
8:03 am
Shaggy,
LOL…Fortunately, that’s a losing bet; no older brother. However, being the older sister, I did my share of holding down. (Girls do it, too.) Who doesn’t laugh at toilet humor? :D
But there’s a time and a place for it. The school bus is not it.
Billy Ray Valentine
May 13th, 2011
8:05 am
Personally, I think the school is just blowing a bunch of hot air about this situation.
love my kid
May 13th, 2011
8:09 am
Great, my son is 6 and I guess I have this to look forward too. He has been able to burp at will since he was 18 months old…thanks to daddy and pawpaw thinking it’s funny. I, on the other hand, don’t find it funny…don’t find bodily functions something to laugh at..but I was raised in a house of girls with a father who was VERY mindful and respectful of that. I have almost daily conversations with him how I don’t think this behavior is funny…that most people don’t. Unfortunately for me, there are too many men in my family/life who DO think all this is funny so all our little boys are awful when it comes to this. However, My son get’s himself kicked off the bus for acting up he will be in SO MUCH TROUBLE…! These poor bus drivers. How do they concentrate on the road with a bus full of loud, rowdy kids? Especially at this time of year when everyone is geared up for the summer break!
JJ
May 13th, 2011
8:25 am
Thank you Shaggy for the education on farting….LOL
Tad Jackson
May 13th, 2011
8:43 am
So you want to be an educator? Sure you do.
Well then, here’s a conversation you might have to have with an eighth grade boy one day. And to help educate you, here’s the exact transcription of the one I once had …
THE SCENE: Class is over and everybody’s walked out and Levon is standing by me while I’m seated at the desk in the front of the classroom. Levon has a big wad of handsome brown hair. He smiles so easily and sincerely, and he’s got big brown eyes with big long eyelashes. Exactly, he’s as cute as a bug. Me, I’ve got my hair real nice and swooped back and all hair sprayed and I have on my new black and white plaid pants with a black and white polka dot tie with black and white check fabric cufflinks and a French blue shirt with the white contrast collar and my fancy loafers. Sugar, somebody call 911.
THE EDUCATOR: When you farted real bad in class today did you do it on purpose?
LEVON: No. No. It just came out!
THE EDUCATOR: Okay … but you saw how it totally messed everybody up and disrupted the class and I had to ask you to go outside for a minute and all that and it took me a while to get them back on the subject.
LEVON: Yessir!
THE EDUCATOR: Are you sick or anything? Do you have any medical issues right now that’s making you fart real loud in class all the time? You know, like you’ve been doing all dang week.
LEVON: No sir!
THE EDUCATOR: Okay … now you know if you feel one coming on in class you know how to squeeze real hard to hold it in, right?
LEVON: Yessir!
THE EDUCATOR: Okay … and thanks for using your manners, by the way. I really appreciate it. So let’s do this from now on … if you feel a good one coming on you don’t even have to ask me … just get up and go into the hall and crank it out or go out the other door and crank it out while you’re walking around in the grass or the driveway out there. Just cut all those bad boys loose and then come on back in and learn some Georgia history. I know you can do it.
LEVON: Oh, my God!
http://www.adixiediary.com
Miss Priss!
May 13th, 2011
8:45 am
Never harvest too soon!
Andre
May 13th, 2011
8:53 am
VERY BAD CALLL!!!!! If those kids get sick for holding their gas, will the school system pay their medical bills???
Mr Montana
May 13th, 2011
9:12 am
Keeping it real Shaggy! lol
@ Let’s Get Real (8:03 a.m.): You emphasize a very good point. Flatulence is a normal “human” function–boy AND girl. How much of an impact is the issue if it WERE a girl that did it? Take my 4-year-old for example. Just the other day, she was at the barbershop with me… Asleep (meaning no conscious control over the function at all)…. She’d drunken a vanilla shake earlier that day and she let the barbershop know it numerous times ;-) No one in the shop made a big deal of it, just waved a hand and kept on with life.
Let's Get Real
May 13th, 2011
9:21 am
@ Andre
Really? People can’t hold their gas without racking up extensive medical bills?!?! C’mon now… Millions of people hold it in all day long at work. It can be done. I’m doing it right now. ;)
Tad Jackson
May 13th, 2011
9:37 am
THE VERY NEXT DAY!
Not five minutes into class, while I’m pontificating about something to do with the fascinating history of Georgia, Levon jumps up out of his desk and runs to the door that leads outside to the sidewalk and the driveway in front of the school. He looked at me and I looked back at him and I knew exactly what was going on. I was real proud of him for remembering our cheese fire drill.
He goes out the door and it still hasn’t registered with the rest of the class until he shuts the door and cuts the cheese so loud outside we can hear it in the classroom. Plus, there are windows in the door and windows along the wall and we can see his facial expression which is real distinctive to this type of hygienic activity. Plus, he’s holding on to the side of the building as if he’s bracing himself for an atomic bomb.
Debbie about fainted and everybody else starts laughing so hard they sucked all the air out of the building.
Levon comes back in not knowing we heard his barking hurricane.
I’m figuring it’ll take them until college to calm down.
They finally get to taking their weekly quiz and the room is all quiet and all of a sudden Elmo takes a big block of fresh cheese and cuts it wide open.
Here’s an educator’s rule of thumb: no one cuts the cheese thisloudly unless it’s an accident, so now the classroom of amped-up, amped-out eighth graders on a Friday looks more like ten blind-drunk monkeys in a boxing match without a bell or a referee.
I’ve about had it by now so I trot to my desk in the back of the room and grab out of the bottom file draw my can of Air Wick “Fresh Waters Aquamarina.” I trot back up to the front of the classroom while they’re still going goo-gaw and press the button and start moving that can right to left and left to right at their heads … and let me tell you, the white spray from this brand new, super charged-up can of room deodorant comes flying out ten feet and makes a hissing noise like a NASA space shuttle on takeoff.
Dixie, I kid you not, two kids jump out of their seats and onto the carpet face first as if a SWAT team just busted through the ceiling on ropes. Everybody is having a conniption fit. Debbie’s into cardiac arrest by this point—she’s bugging her eyes out and squeezing her neck with both hands and baring her teeth—and I swear to God if Lurlene had walked by just then and looked through the door she’d have to be carried out of the building on a stretcher. With oxygen.
By the way, this is my honors class.
http://www.adixiediary.com
theresa
May 13th, 2011
10:03 am
I actually thought this was interesting from a zero tolerance perspective. I think a lot of schools are punishing or over punishing for things that would hae been ignored in the 80s and 90s becaujse they are so afraid of being sued or accused of not handling something that the jump on things.
melissa
May 13th, 2011
10:03 am
where’s my comment T?
JATL
May 13th, 2011
10:14 am
This decision is beyond stupid! EVERYONE farts EVERY day -whether we do it in private, public or wherever -it IS a basic and unavoidable bodily function. Of course some days are worse than others, but the only way I can see this punishment having any merit whatsoever is if he was doing it loudly and on purpose to get the other kids stirred up AND he had been warned before about his behavior AND it was getting the other kids on the bus cranked up to out-of-control levels. I find it a little hard to believe that is what happened over some farts. Boys, particularly LOVE to fart and fart often and laugh about it. In fact, the very first thing I think of when I think of riding the bus (which I did 20 miles one way my whole school career) is farts. It’s a fact of life on a school bus. That we’ve come to this in our society where we’re kicking boys off of school buses for passing gas -that’s pathetic.
May 13th, 2011
10:19 am
Shaggy sucks.
-1 point
JJ
May 13th, 2011
10:23 am
My boss is a fart-aholic……we call him the Crop Duster. Swoops in, farts, then leaves…….
motherjanegoose
May 13th, 2011
10:28 am
@shaggy 10:52…hoorah
Have any of you ever been a bus driver? God Bless Them!
I was just talking to my son last week and burping came up. He mentioned burping on command.
Not something I have ever done. What? Perhaps farting does fall into this category…we did not discuss it.
abc
May 13th, 2011
10:31 am
My youngest son can fart on demand. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but there you are.
It Happens In Fine Literature, Too
May 13th, 2011
10:32 am
From Toonamint of Champions …
Sitting in the front row, a lady golf writer for USA Today, who was pretty darn sure it was Huge Pecker who had some goons sneak into her office and change around her typewriter keys after she wrote that column that exposed to the world Augusta National Golf Club didn’t have any members who didn’t have peckers, didn’t care one bit about what words he wanted them to use.
She lit a long fireplace-style match, leaned over onto her left butt cheek, lifted her right knee way up then moved it way over to the right, put the end of the lit match very close to her anus, grit her teeth, groaned, growled, turned red, then turned purple, and cut an astonishing fart she’d been saving for three and a half weeks—since the tournament at Doral. The blue fart flame was eight feet long.
Huge Pecker ducked behind the podium, into which she carved her initials with the tip of the flame, which was hissing.
MomOf2Girls
May 13th, 2011
10:36 am
Congrats Tad – you made me cry I was laughing so hard!!! That is the funniest thing I have read in a very long time.
Sylvania
May 13th, 2011
10:39 am
The earlier kids find out that breaking rules has consequences, the better.
It Happens In Fine Literature, Too
May 13th, 2011
10:46 am
MomOf2Girls … You’re welcome! And you can also thank Levon, Elmo, Debbie Jenkins, and all the rest of my kids from of my madcap rookie year. All I did was go home every day and write up what happened in class. I was laughing while I wrote it … for the second time!
http://www.adixiediary.com
RJ
May 13th, 2011
11:01 am
Regardless if it was intentional or not, the administration over-reacted. This tends to be the case with most public schools today. Zero tolerance equals zero common sense.
MomsRule
May 13th, 2011
11:11 am
If the boys were making spectacles of themselves and causing disruption then yes, suspend their disrespectful little behinds. The article says they had been warned. We all know kids can get out of control and quick.
My son came home daily for about a week complaining about a neighborhood “angel” who kept farting on purpose on the bus just to get a reaction out of the other students. I wish they had suspended him for a day as well.
I find it amusing how so often people comment about manners having gone out the window. To me, this is a fine example of no manners and yet people are disagreeing with the consequences.
DB
May 13th, 2011
11:19 am
Oh, for heaven’s sake — everyone agrees that “tooting” on cue is rude and crass. So why is it suddenly funny if someone writes about it?
Have a nice weekend, everyone . . . this has nowhere to go but downhill. :-)
HB
May 13th, 2011
11:22 am
Oh please. We don’t really know what went on, but if the kids were being intentionally crude and disruptive on the bus (and I think they probably were), then losing their bus privileges for one day seems perfectly reasonable to me. I don’t see how this can be equated with zero tolerance policies that on a first offense require suspension or even expulsion. Honestly, I can’t believe this made even local news to begin with, let alone got reposted here for discussion (uh-oh — by daring to write that, am I now going to get a warning for being abusive and a threat of being banned?).
Jeff
May 13th, 2011
11:27 am
It’s not like the kid pulled out a gun. Dam*. Kids do this kind of thing. It’s like the boy that got suspended for taping a proposal for the prom on the wall. WTF? And you wonder where romance has gone.
motherjanegoose
May 13th, 2011
11:39 am
DB..I agree with you but hubby’s family finds it funny…
FYI…it is BAD if it happens near you while you are buckled in and on the airplane.
jarvis
May 13th, 2011
11:40 am
Who doesn’t like a good fart joke? But as with everythng else, there is a time and a place. The school bus is neither. If they were kicking up their legs and forcing them out after being warned, the punishment fit the crime.
The part I can’t believe is that it made the local news there?