At boarding school; or any school for that matter, one will inevitably be assigned a nickname. These can originate from either a reference to a physical attribute, a personality trait, or if you get off lightly, simply some derivation or shortening of your name.
At my school, each student was called by his last name, and as such, on the first day of my first term, the art teacher, Mr. Livingston, decided whilst reading out the student’s names, that my name, Lubomirski, was just too long and that it would have to be shortened.
So moving forward, I was known by teachers and fellow students, as Lubo. That is to say, that I was called this when people were being civil towards me.
During our history class, we learnt about the Black Death, a plague that began in Constantinople in 1333 and spread outwards, killing millions of people across Europe and Asia. One of the tell-tale signs of having succumbed to the plague, also known as the Bubonic Plague, were large, black, pus filled, boils. As my luck would have it, those boils were called buboes.
The name, Bubo, rhymed too perfectly with my given name of Lubo, for anybody in that class to not sit up immediately and smile, mentally taking note for future verbal skirmishes.
Adding to my pain, a very popular soap opera was imported from America, called Dynasty, in which the lead, hated, female character was called Alexis Colby, played by Joan Collins. As soon as I heard that name on TV, my whole body shuddered, as I prayed that no one else would see the show before school started again.
No, such luck.
My first name, Alexi, was close enough to the character’s name, Alexis, that my fellow students found it impossible to ignore. From that day on, I was called, ABC. (Alexis Bubo Colby)
But why stop there?
Later, still, when the other boys found a letter addressed to me, saying, HSH Prince Alexi Lubomirski, the boys immediately changed my title to Princess, allowing my new improved moniker to be:
Princess Alexis Bubo Colby….. Or Princess ABC, if one was in a rush.
Ahhh. The joys of childhood.
I was not the only boy to be caught in the crossfire of name-calling. One boy, who was thick in the throes of preteen hormonal development, found it impossible, when excited, to stand next to a piece of furniture, without rubbing himself furiously on the corner.
He was christened, Corner.
Another lad had the good fortune to laugh hysterically at the slightest whiff of anything funny. Nothing bad about that, you might say, but, alas, his laugh was something akin to a donkey being throttled.
He became, Donkey.
And then there was Jeremy Hartson, a boy who was never far from being sent to the headmaster’s office for some misdemeanor or other.
Hartson’s special talent was that whenever he laughed, whether it was a chuckle or a guffaw, he would invariably pass wind.
His problem was that, whenever said transfer of gas occurred after any laugh, it would of course, cause the rest of us laugh, which in turn made him laugh even more, causing another trumpet, and so on and so on.
His name was therefore, rather unimaginably changed from Hartson, to Fartson.
Imagine if you will, the four of us. A plague ridden, soap opera princess; a boy who was in a perpetual cycle of laughing, farting, and laughing again; another boy, screaming like a dying donkey, and finally our friend, Corner, having his wicked way with a bed post.
The sleeping arrangements at boarding school consisted of all the boys being divided up into dormitories, which would range in size from a small room with a single bunkbed, to a larger room with twelve beds side-by-side.
When I was nine years old, I was assigned to a dormitory called Bella Vista, although looking back I cannot remember anything outside of the window that would describe the Vista as Bella. The dormitory was home to three sets of bunkbeds, and Corner, Fartson and Donkey, where amongst my cell mates.
Our bedtimes were ridiculously early, especially so in the summer, when it was light outside until 10 PM. This one particular summer evening, we all marched into the bathroom to brush our teeth before lights out. Everyone had their own plastic cup with their last names on it, into which we placed our individual toothbrush and toothpaste.
With everything being so rigorously uniform at the school, a toothbrush was one item in which we could demonstrate and highlight a small modicum of individual flare. Some of us had a Star Wars toothbrush, others had images of ET plastered all over theirs. Mine was a blue race car, which stood up-right, next to Fartson’s cup, which held a Gremlin themed toothbrush, where the silver bristles of the brush, doubled up as the spikey hair on top of the gremlin’s head.
Once we had finished polishing our pearly whites, we ran back into the bedroom, which was partly lit by golden rays of the setting sun, flickering through the stained curtains, highlighting the extraordinary amount of dust in the air. We immediately involved ourselves in some of the usual, overexcited and mischievous shenanigans, involving lots of things being thrown around, and pillow fights; all the while, listening out for the matron, Mrs Hume Brown, who was one floor above us.
Corner began to roll up a pair of clean sport socks, and proceeded to jettison it towards my head, with the battle cry of STINK BALL!
The rules were simple. Anyone who got touched by the sock ball, a.k.a. STINK BALL, was the STINKER, and remained so until he had thrown and hit another boy with said ball. A highly intellectual game indeed.
Fartson and I immediately dove under the covers, trying to avoid the dreaded ball of socks. As the game intensified, bodies leapt over and under beds, careering into each other, with unsuccessfully suppressed yelps, floating down the hall. The faster the game got, the more screeches and laughs there were, which of course meant Donkey started EE-Awwing and Fartson started flatulating, which set everything off again at a higher level.
The fact that we were all supposed to be tucked up in bed, with lights out, made everything ten times more hysterical.
Corner picked up the socks again and launched them towards Fartson, who deftly swung his hips sideways like a seasoned bullfighter, squeaking out a raspberry as he leapt. The socks bounced off my head and rolled towards the window.
Everyone was on the floor crying with laughter. Corner was smacking his crotch in excitement, Donkey was biting his bed cover, trying to stifle his braying, and I was running around the room trying to find the sock ball in the fading light.
As I ran across the room, I suddenly slipped and found myself momentarily in mid-air, before crashing down to the floor, with an almighty thud.
Arggghh!
I grabbed my back and rolled over, trying to see how I could have possibly slipped on such an old and coarse carpet.
The sight that met me, I will never manage to erase from my memory file, as hard as I might try.
It seems that, whilst in the throes of uncontrollable laughter, Fartson had not only passed wind, but also followed through. He had then allowed the resulting mess to slide down his pajama leg and onto the floor, before creeping out, undetected in the chaos.
The gift that he had deposited on our dormitory floor, was now squelching and oozing through my toes, highlighted by the dying sun, that gave a sort of soft, stage lighting to this grotesque character, that was now the unexpected star of this evening’s events.
What the hell???!! I screamed.
The room, fell into immediate silence, and all the boys squinted and focused their eyes on my foot.
Which one of you pooed on the floor?! I shouted.
The room erupted into crotch slapping, guffawing and neighing, as I jumped up onto one foot and hopped down the hallway, into the bathroom.
I slammed my fists on the locked toilet door.
FARTSON! DID YOU POO ON THE FLOOR?!
Behind the door, I could hear muffled hysterics, mixed with weeping, and a few squeakers thrown in for good measure.
I HATE YOU! I cried, crazed with anger, and with no idea what to do next.
I spun around and swung my foot up into the first sink, turning on the tap and washing as much gunk off my foot as possible, trying desperately not to look at it, or accidentally splash myself.
After the first rinse, I dared to steal a glance of the damage, to find that most of it had washed off, yet there was a large deposit, lodged under my toenails.
I stifled the urge to vomit, and found myself balancing on one leg, dry heaving into my arm.
Eeeeuaaahhhh! Eeeeuaaahhhh!
It was then that my eye caught a glimpse of something large, staring at me with an evil grin above the sink.
Fartson’s toothbrush.
There seemed to be some cosmic, poetic justice to the thoughts that were forming in my head. I leant forward, plucked it quietly out of the cup, ran it under the hot tap, and started scrubbing away at my big toe, dry heaving with each stroke.
It was then, that our matron, Mrs. Hume Brown, came crashing through the doors.
WHAT ON GOD’S GREEN EARTH IS GOING ON IN HERE?! she bellowed.
Fartson was half way through the door with his pajama bottoms wrapped up in a ball and smeared feces running down his leg. I was trying not to hurl, wielding a soiled toothbrush, whose gremlin character had now been transformed into a brunette.
Hartson pooed on the floor, and I stepped in it, I whimpered.
The matron’s eyes could have popped out of her head, and it was quite possible that the bizarre information and the sights in front of her did not all compute, but after a split second, she whip-snapped her finger towards the hallway.
BED! NOW!
I would love to say that this was the only fecal inspired story from boarding school, but… Well, let’s just leave it at that, shall we?
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The best story ever! Didn't see that coming.
🤣🤣🤣 Great story that brings back my own memories of dorm antics, though none of which are close to this. As for nicknames… Princess ABC is tame compared to mine—- Il Duce because of my Italian roots and the fact I was head of our RAF CCF section.