The Blood Brothers, Part 4: Kinder Surprise.

Pretty much everybody in our little town in Canada has connections to the US, and a significant number of High School graduates go “down to the States” for college. In order to do that, Canadian students prepare for and take the ACT exam that is required for most American schools. Since so many kids from Cardston take it, our High School is a regional hub for the test. Even kids from larger city centers had to travel to our tiny town for the test.

This is how one of those testing sessions went.

There were two neighboring classrooms taking the test. The proctor for the exam was our Social Studies teacher (who I credit with really getting me interested in the subject to this day). For privacy reasons, we’ll just call him Mr. Strange. Johnny, Ryan, and myself were in Mr. Strange’s room. Mark knew this would be a recipe for disaster, and he maturely elected to take the test in the adjoining room. He was always the most mature out of all of us.

Testing was going smoothly. Mr Strange got the silence that he needed to properly concentrate on organizing his Kinder Surprise collection (a delicious chocolate-toy combination that is *illegal* in the USA). I remember working studiously on the exam, because my previous score was pretty bad.

There was a pretty girl sitting up a few rows ahead, right in the front of the class. I think she was from Calgary. Possibly Alaska. Meh.

Suddenly, from this pretty girl erupted a trumpeting and melodious fart. It was probably just a cute little squeak, but we’re talking story here so let’s say it was rooty-tooty. I think my first thought was to feel bad for her. Johnny and I were planning on getting some digits from this gathering, so my first instinct was to not screw that up.

I’m not that professional. It took everything I had to keep from bursting out with laughter.

The class remained silent in a state of shock and I think most people were just trying to pretend it wasn’t happening. I think the nerdiest of the group were upset that their concentration was broken by the… wind.

Just to make sure I wasn’t audio-hallucinating, I peeked up to Mr. Strange for confirmation that I wasn’t the only one who heard this. His face was beet red – visibly changing shades on the way to blue. The kind of blue that comes from suffocation. He had tears coming from his eyes and his hands were covering his mouth while his body convulsed with the repressed laughter.

I couldn’t take it. My eyes filled with tears and I burst out laughing. This triggered the whole class. Johnny broke his pencil. Ryan almost fell over from his chair, his sides hurt so bad. Mr. Strange wiped the tears from his eyes, looked at the flatulent girl, and said something like, “I’m sorry. I just… I… Well, uh, next time, eh?”

To this day, I’m confident that whenever tweet-cheeks hears the words “ACT” or “Cardston” she gets into the fetal position and cries herself to sleep.