Tonight's Poet Corner: Fart Alligator

Fart Alligator
by Belinda Roddie

Two flapping lips pasted onto an
olive face under dark hair and a neon pink
headband called me a "fart alligator"
today - behind my back, no less - as some form of
second grade rebellion like they were told,
"Forward, march" after Hanukkah books and
Christmas carols. In an all-girl class,
there's bound to be some medicinal dose of
sass, bottled up and doled out like
cough syrup for the flu season. The funniest thing

was, I had to act all serious about it, with
huffy eyes and puffed out chest, telling this
poor little lady how in the wrong she'd been to
ever lob an insult my way, a teacher's way.
And I'm not complaining, it's necessary to
grab a student's shoulders and
twist them enough so that her head sits
properly on a polo-cuffed neck. Ground her nose into
black pepper reality and let her
sneeze a couple of times to get the
defiance out of her system. Discipline, the
espresso shot to a sluggish overcast afternoon.

But when I went home and told my family
about the allegedly heinous
shedding of tact, we had a good laugh
over flour and gingerbread stacked on sheets.
I can't deny the jab was unexpected -
maybe not clever or spicy on the tongue,
but it gets points for originality.
Basically, let's just say I won't
forget the blunted barb so easily,
and "fart alligator" will remain in amusing infamy
in my comic book brain. Maybe such a

species could be drawn out in a
fresh diagram, framed, and wrapped up
to send in a package to my student when she's
twice her age, to remind her of what a mouth
she motorized in my little classroom,
where learning is love and love is learning,
and fart alligators are extinct.
Not toot crocodiles, though. They're endangered.