At my age there are a lot of things that ain't as keen as they used to be, smell isn't one of them. But last Sunday I really wished it were because I caught a whiff of something unbelievably foul. The kind of smell that makes you gag. And worse, it was in my house, the whole house.

Let me back up.

I was chilling out on my back porch enjoying a cool drink and the Sunday paper after having worked a few hours earlier in the day.

My youngest, Jordan, had a few of his friends over. They were working on a video project for their Spanish class and had been for several hours. In fact, they had been working so long I thought they should have long been finished. I was going in the house to play the mother card, you know, tell them that it was time to wrap this thing up because it was dinner time. I hadn't cooked yet but I was about to get started.

I pushed open the sliding glass door and stepped inside and that is when it hit me and nearly knocked me over.

WHAT THE HECK IS THAT SMELL!

​The first thing I did was look in the trash can. But this was something else. This was toxic. It smelled like something had up and died. No more like something someone had stepped in. It smelled like something that belonged in the toilet bowl. Need I say more?

I walked into my living room and there were four boys sitting in there chatting as if nothing were wrong. I'm thinking, can't they smell this? Then I noticed that the two front windows had been lifted open. So I asked. What is that smell in the house?

That is when they all turned to look at this one boy, the biggest one. They snickered. I wasn't laughing at all. They said he had been farting all over the house, and they wondered what he had been eating.

“It's awful isn't it,” they said. “No its disgusting,” I thought, but didn't say anything. I was too angry to speak.

I wanted to tell him how rude I thought that was. I wanted to tell him that I felt like he had completely disrespected my home; to ask him if he had any home training at all. What did he think bathrooms were for? We have three of them in our home. If he was sick I could understand, but what he did was just intolerable. I wanted to tell him to get the heck out of my house and never come back. But I didn't.

I walked, nearly ran, because I was holding my breath, back outside. I sat there for a while trying to calm down and get that smell out of my nose. I know that 15-year-old boys can be stinky, and I know boys, most kids actually, think farts are funny, I raised two boys.

But REALLY?

When I went back into the house I went straight for that powder you sprinkle on the carpets to get rid of funky doggy smells, and sprinkled it throughout the house and pulled out the vacuum. Then I peeled an orange, then a lemon and stuffed them both in the garbage disposal, ran hot water over them and turned the disposal on to send the citrus smell into the room.

Eventually the boys left. Later one of them, but not the stinky one, returned to work a few more hours with Jordan on the video.

I couldn't hold my tongue.

I had been thinking about that stinky child all evening and how angry it made me and whether his mom knew he behaved that way. Was he ill? Was I over-reacting? I had stewed about.

I sat them both down and told them to tell their stinky friend that he is welcome to visit our home any time, but that if he ever does what he did today again I would not be so kind. I would have to tell him off and put him out. I would not hold back. I wanted them to tell him I was not happy with the way he behaved in my home and that I thought he owed me an apology for his rudeness.

When I was done spouting off, both of the boys looked at me and said they absolutely agreed.

I was so glad to hear that they agreed with me, that 15-year-old boys do have manners and no they are not all selfish, rude and stinky.