Lynn's Comments: There's a story behind this strip. I will call it, "The Fart" because one small expulsion nearly ended 4 young lives on a warm, late Saturday night. Here goes: It was around midnight on a warm summer Saturday. I quietly snuck out of our small suburban house and padded down the dark lane to meet with a gathering of ten-year-olds up for pranks and trouble. I was one of the instigators. This evening there were four of us: Teddy, Terry, Joanne and me. With her folks down at the pub, Joanne suggested we go to her house and raid the fridge. Her house was an easy walk away; the lights were out, and the door was open. As we entered through the kitchen, we could hear music. Joanne's older sister had let in her boyfriend, and with no adults at home, the two were on the living room couch and intimately involved. I told the others to be quiet and listen. Here, I said, was an opportunity not to be missed! The music was loud enough to mask any noise we might make. If we all crawled on our hands and knees, we could creep behind the couch and then leap up and scare the pants off them (figuratively speaking). It seemed like a good idea at the time. We crouched on all fours. Terry went first, then me, followed by Teddy and Joanne. We crawled in the dark along the living room wall, and soon we were all in a row behind the couch, ready to leap up and pounce on the preoccupied pair. The record player had a "stack" loader and was playing a series of old 78 records. Nose to tail behind the couch, the four of us were tense and prepared. At my signal, we would jump. One, two, three and... The record player stopped. In the time it took for the next record to drop onto the turntable, Terry, who was right in front of me, let go a loud, wet fart. It was loud enough to echo. The victims were shocked and alert. In a flash, they were off the couch and were shoving it as hard as they could, crushing the four of us against the wall. We were caught in a vise—unable to move forward or backward. We fought. We pleaded. Our lives were over. Joanne, with the clarity that comes when the end is near, threatened to tell her folks that her sis had been making out on the couch. The pressure stopped. We had a reprieve. We stood, pushed the couch away and carefully backed into the kitchen. Teddy and Joanne ran for the basement while Terry and I ran for the lane. The boyfriend could have hammered each of us into a pulp. Sweating and breathing hard, we were grateful to have escaped unscathed. As Terry and I walked back to our houses, we talked about how close we had been to death. How great was that! It had been a night of adventure and excitement. Still, I was less than impressed by the way we had been discovered. It was all Terry's fault. I gave him a hefty slug on the arm before I headed for home and made a pledge to myself: If we ever found ourselves nose to tail behind a couch like that again...I would go first!