Confession: It Was I Who Dealt It On The Bus In 1978

I went to this day camp in the summer of 1978. I wasn't a very popular kid and kept to myself, but I wasn't unpopular enough to be picked on, just ignored. The camp scapegoat was this kid named Russell, who was short and pudgy with eternally crooked glasses, kind of like Piggy from Lord of the Flies. Anyway, I don't know if it was the tater tots or the franks and beans or the egg salad sandwiches, but the camp lunches committed unspeakable atrocities upon my digestive tract on a daily basis. Heading home one day, avidly reading a Betty & Veronica Double Digest, I squeezed out an airborne toxic event of unprecedented potency. If you were to feed a dog a bucket of Brussels sprouts and rancid lard and lock him in a closet for a couple of days, the smell that hit you when you opened that closet door would be about one tenth as powerful as this. It took about five seconds for the miasma to spread throughout the big yellow bus, then the girls started shrieking and holding their noses and the guys pulled their shirts up to their foreheads. Counselors with rapidly tearing up eyes leaped from their seats to open all windows, and for a minute it seemed like the bus driver was going to pull over so we could evacuate. Some girl stopped choking long enough to cry out that Russell cut the cheese, and everyone started yelling at him. Russell started bawling and insisted that he didn't do it. He gnashed his teeth and didth rent his garments asunder. Meanwhile, I buried my head deeper in my comic and prayed that I hadn't in fact crapped my pants, so stubbornly did the overwhelming stench linger in the stifling summer heat. As the offensive vapors lodged in the noses of the entire bus, a one-sided melee ensued and Russell disappeared beneath a flurry of noogies, deadlegs, purple nurples, shark bites and wet willies. I even reached over the seat and gave him a red neck with a resounding slap before retreating back into my literary pursuits. Finally the counselors broke up the beating and exhaust fumes from the highway dissipated the horrific odor. Russell sobbed the whole way home, and the guilt started building within me. It's taken nearly 30 years, but I'm finally ready to confess that it was me and wherever you are, Russell, whether this incident turned you into a serial killer or dotcom billionaire, I'm terribly sorry for what I put you through, and I'll never do it again.