The first thing to know about this gas station is that it is not a gas station.
There are no pumps. No convenience store. No windshield squeegees. And, despite what one might reasonably expect, there is no requirement that anyone actually purchase gas.
It is a designated corner of an Atlanta elementary school classroom where students can go when they need to pass … gas.
Its creator, Candy Sydney-Browning, a 36-year-old second-grade teacher, calls it the “gas station.” The specific spot where students go is the “gusty winds area.” There are air freshener sprays nearby.
And, according to Sydney-Browning, it works.
“I have a very weak stomach, so I cannot take it,” she tells TODAY.com. “And so I was like, OK, I’m just gonna create this little area over here, and you just get up, you go over there, do your business, come back, and that’s just it.”
The arrangement has recently attracted considerable attention online after Sydney-Browning posted a TikTok showing the corner and explaining how it works. The video prompted thousands of reactions, ranging from disbelief to enthusiastic declarations that every classroom should have one.
One commenter wrote, “This is genius and normalizing body functions without disturbing the classroom amazing.”
Another asked the question that seems to trouble many adults: “And the rest of the class stays focused while somebody is farting in the corner???”
There was also a predictable amount of parental and teacher horror.
“I’d be so embarrassed with the whole class knowing I’m getting up to go fart,” one person wrote.
For Sydney-Browning, however, the point is not really about flatulence. It is about not wasting instructional time.
When she began teaching at her current school, she says, she noticed that students were frequently leaving the classroom to use the restroom. Because she wanted to maximize the amount of time students spent learning, she began having the class use the restroom before lessons.
But there was another problem. Children pass gas.
And unlike adults, who have spent decades perfecting the art of pretending that nobody noticed, young children can be remarkably direct about it.
“They were like, ‘He did it, she did it,’” Sydney-Brownings says. “And they’ll point fingers and they’ll try to move away from each other.”
Her response was essentially: Yes, people fart. Please behave accordingly.
“It’s normal,” she told them. “But you have to excuse yourself.”
So she created a place where they could.
In a TikTok showing the setup, Sydney-Browning walked viewers through her classroom. She pointed out where students sat for instruction and then demonstrated the route to the corner, where a small yellow sign marked the location.
Students did not need to raise their hands to use it. That, she said, was the whole point.
“While I’m teaching, no one has to ask,” she explained in the video. “I don’t have to stop teaching in order to say yes. You can go.”
Instead, a student simply got up, walked to the corner, took care of the matter and returned.
“The student inside the classroom, they don’t lose any instruction,” she said. “They can continue to learn. It’s a win-win situation.”
The first student to actually use the station last year provided an important test of the theory.
He had, Sydney-Browning says, “a very troubled stomach.” He was the first to make the trip. Some classmates turned around. There were smiles.
But, she said, nobody pointed fingers. Nobody made fun of him. And then, eventually, nobody paid attention at all.
“It just became a norm,” she tells TODAY.
That normalization is perhaps the most serious idea hiding beneath the jokes.
Children spend years learning which bodily functions are acceptable to discuss and which must be hidden. They learn that sneezing is fine, coughing is fine, blowing their nose is fine, but farting is something that should be met with shame, laughter or accusations.
Sydney-Browning’s approach is less complicated: Bodies do things. Handle them discreetly and move on.
Students have largely stopped reacting to the station, which may be the clearest indication that the novelty has worn off.
“Sometimes I even forget that I have it,” she says.
But that is not what has happened on TikTok. There, the novelty remains very much alive.
People have proposed installing fart corners in their homes. One commenter suggested getting a designated sign for a husband. Another said she had been “sending my husband to the corner after he farts” and had apparently been approaching the arrangement incorrectly.
Teachers have joined in, too.
One middle-school teacher wrote: “I teach middle school and we have a fart closet.” Another said she was adopting the idea as an eighth-grade teacher.
Still, not everyone is convinced.
One commenter worried that a child who passes gas frequently could become a target for teasing. Others wondered whether students would really be mature enough to ignore a classmate walking across the room specifically to fart.
Sydney-Browning says that was precisely why she made the practice routine. The less attention adults give the behavior, the less interesting it becomes to children.
There is, perhaps, an accidental lesson here in classroom management: Sometimes the fastest way to make something stop being funny is to stop treating it as funny.
On TikTok, the debate continues.
In Sydney-Browning’s classroom, apparently, the matter is settled. The gas station is open.
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
