“The only thing funnier than Grandma rapping, is Grandma farting.”
A 99-year-old Marlinton, West Virginia woman is making waves after a video created by her great-grandson has gone viral.
Caroline Kellison, a retired schoolteacher, mother of seven, and great-grandmother of 13, is receiving some long-overdue recognition. Born in 1916, Caroline has lived through both World Wars, the Great Depression, and, thanks to a recently uploaded video clip, Internet fame as an elderly woman who awakens herself upon farting in her sleep.
The video came about unexpectedly as a few members of the large family gathered to enjoy Easter dinner. “We were all just carrying on, talking, when granny fell asleep right there at the table,” recalls Caroline’s youngest son, Dave.
It was then that Caroline’s great-grandson Justin decided to film the sight, fully expecting to share only a short clip of his sleeping relative, when he was handed a “gift from God.”
“Oh man, that was so awesome!” recalled the 13-year-old of the sleep-fart, which he immediately filmed and shared on his Vine account. “She’s always just falling asleep everywhere—it’s so funny—but this time it really paid off!”
Raised in a nearly dilapidated, single-family farmhouse with no electricity or running water, Caroline juggled school and work on her family’s hog farm to help raise her younger siblings, before eventually earning a teaching degree at West Virginia University.
“That was pretty unheard of at the time,” recalled Caroline. “I just knew there was something bigger for me to achieve out there, and teaching kids just felt like the perfect fit.”
Of course, at the time she had no idea that she would become best known among youths for flatulating herself awake from a nap. In fact, her family has yet to inform her that hundreds of thousands of strangers now refer to her as “Granny Sleep Fart.”
Having lived through and overcome extreme poverty, Caroline would take a particular interest in championing the underserved children of her rural hometown, pioneering a free- or reduced- rate school lunch program for low-income students, which is still fully operational today.
“Do you know how rare it is to have something like that sync-up so perfectly?” asked Dave of the six-second video clip featuring the first woman in his family to graduate from college. “I mean, of all the seconds he could have filmed, those were the one’s that got recorded!” he added amid riotous laughter.
“Granny Sleep Fart” has since been shared on various social media platforms over 250,000 times, which becomes even more impressive considering that its subject single-handedly encouraged countless students to pursue their individual goals, while simultaneously raising three generations of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, all on a teacher’s salary.
“Honestly, Justin is a fucking genius,” says his 17-year-old sister, Devon. “Nothing exciting ever happens in this stupid family, so the fact that this thing went viral literally overnight is huge!”
When asked for her secret to longevity, Caroline replied, “The love of my family. They’re the ones I’ve always known I can count on.”
