by Susan Berran
“I know! You’ve already told me!” I shot back, annoyed. Hey, I’m not deaf! I don’t need to be told the same thing over and over. Unless, of course, my butt can hear as well? Nahhhhh!
My head suddenly flooded with a zillion and one questions. Mom’s new little piece of information made me start to wonder about all sorts of stuff like … well, if everyone’s butt does the smelling, then what the heck is the nose on the front of our head being used for?
It couldn’t be stuck smack bang in the middle of peoples’ faces just to make them look pretty. Because I’ve sure seen some really weird looking noses that definitely do not make the person look any better!
Some people get round ones. Others get wide ones. Some are thin and long. Some are like a slide, and others look like the big fat backside of an overweight orangutan. There are heaps of shapes and sizes. I reckon nature gives everyone a different nose for no reason at all!
But then again … maybe your nose is useful. I guess it could have something to do with your balance. It could be like the keel under a yacht that keeps it upright in the water, or the fin underneath a surfboard that keeps it steady.
If you think about it, when you were born you couldn’t walk at all. You’re a useless, little pink lump that lies about until someone picks you up off the floor. Your nose is a tiny little bump on your face—it’s more like a pimple really. But as you start to grow, your nose starts to grow as well. Until one day, bammm, your nose is spread across half your face and suddenly you’re learning to stand, walk, run, jump—amazing!
And when people with a cold get a blocked nose, they can barely get out of bed and walk around. They spend all day lying around until their nose is clear again.
It seems that the moment your nose gets blocked up, or isn’t working properly, you totally lose your balance! So your nose really could be a sort of “human sail” to stop you falling over. And obviously the worse your balance is, the bigger your nose. That’s why some people have a humongous, gigantasuarus nose that looks like Mount Everest.
Maybe we have a big nose in the middle of our face to take the attention away from other bits of our body that we want to draw attention away from.
Kind of like my neighbor. Her grandkids call her “Stinky Gran” because she always smells like the body odor of a dead sloth. She has the biggest, most gigantic, “butt”-shaped nose that I’ve ever seen! It covers her face so it looks like she has a huge nose stuck on top of her neck, with tiny eyes hiding behind it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her whole face because it’s camouflaged so well by her nose.
Yep, I think some people really need a big nose to hide behind.
So while our butts are smelling, our noses are keeping us standing upright and hiding all those really gross features that we don’t want anyone to see.
Now that Mom has told me my butt smells, I definitely wanted to find out just how my butt smells stuff. And I couldn’t wait to start testing some of my ideas.
I figured that my butt had to be an especially super-sensitive sniffer, because most of the time I’m sitting down. My butt must be able to smell through my pants, my undies, or even the couch, bed, chair, or anything else that I’m sitting on. Which could also mean that a lot of stuff smells different when I’m sitting down.
Like last night when I was lying on the couch, starving to death while Mom was cooking dinner, I took a whiff and it smelled like a truckload of really bad farts mixed with dead fish wrapped in dirty socks! But that could have been because I’d just let go a massive, ripper fart and my butt mixed the smell with Mom’s dinner—and she really was cooking disgusting, dead fish in weird sauce!
I started thinking there are probably heaps of other smells that I totally miss out on when I’m lying around on the couch and not paying much attention.
I headed into my bedroom to start trying to figure out a bunch of smell tests that I could do to find out just how well my butt smells. That’s when I realized that I’d actually already done the first test a couple of days ago when we went out to my Auntie and Uncle’s goat farm for a barbecue lunch. It was a stinking hot day but luckily they have this awesome swimming pool. So, while Mom and Auntie Ree cooked lunch, I went for a swim with Uncle Karl.
I distinctly remember smelling sausages, steak, mushrooms, and onion cooking on the grill while my butt was underwater in the pool! So that means my butt must be the most awesome, super-sniffer ever!
I started to wonder if everyone else’s butt can smell while underwater?
I was thinking about testing my theory out a bit further by swimming with a snorkel, a hose, a bucket, and a can of baked beans. Before I got too far, Mom screamed out from the kitchen. “Get to the table for dinner!”
As I headed towards the dinner table, I began preparing for my second experiment. I started clenching, unclenching, clenching, and unclenching my butt cheeks as tightly as possible to suck in all the smells of dinner. Sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff. Ewwwww! I didn’t need to suck the smells into my butt very hard to know what that revolting aroma was. The stench floating out from the kitchen was from the grossest vegetable on earth! The totally unmistakable, “chuck-up” smell of sweaty armpits and burnt tires—brussel sprouts! Yeah, my butt could smell that green crap a mile away!
As I continued along the hallway towards the dinner table my head was churning—bursting with more ideas. It looked like I had the perfect opportunity to carry out another experiment and discover just how well my butt really could smell.
I turned around and started walking backwards to make sure that I didn’t see what else was for dinner. Then as I stopped and stood backwards in the kitchen doorway, I clenched my butt cheeks as tightly as possible while I listened for Mom placing our plates on the table. But just as I heard Mom and my baby sister, Little Miss Smelly Melly Prissy-Pants, sit down in front of their steaming hot plate of, ummm, “food” Mom said, “Guess what’s for dinner?” So I yanked down my pants, bent over, and pointed my big butt cheeks at the two of them, trying to suck in as many of the smells hanging in the air as possible. There was brussel sprouts, and hmmmm, something that smelled like some gross type of dead meat, and …
“Eewwwww. Bottom!” my snotty little sister squealed at the top of her voice.
“Sam!” Mom bellowed as she turned to follow Melly’s gaze. “Pull up your pants!”
“But I’m experimenting!” I explained.
“I’ll experiment with how long you can live without your Xbox if you don’t pull your pants up right now!” Mom snapped.
“But I’m trying to figure out how my butt smells!” I tried to defend myself, while still shining my bare butt in their direction.
Then, for some weird reason Mom thought I was trying to be a “smart-butt” and told me to go to bed without dinner. Which is so not fair! After all, she was the one that told me my butt smells in the first place!
Sitting in my room, I figured I may as well do a few more experiments to help pass the time. I opened the window, hopped up onto my desk, yanked down my pants, and shoved my bare butt out the window; poking it outside into the cold evening breeze. I wanted to see what flowers and cars and other stuff I could smell.
But then for some odd reason, our neighbor came over, banged on our front door, and whined to Mom about my butt hanging out the window “for the whole world to see” and I got into even more trouble with Mom!
Which totally sucked!
But I’ve been thinking, and I now know why I nearly choke to death from the smell in the toilet after eating curry. It’s way too close to my sniffer.
Oh, and I’ve learned something else really cool too.
The other day at school my teacher called me a smart-butt and said she didn’t know what was in my head. Then this morning, Mom said there was nothing between my ears. Wow! So now people are telling me that my skull is actually completely empty and it’s my butt that’s smart! Looks like I’ll have to think of a new bunch of experiments to figure out why I have a big, empty head and whether
it’s both butt-cheeks that are smart or just one.
Awesome!
Can you make candles using earwax?
I don’t know! I wouldn’t have a clue! If you thought I was going to answer the question for you … well, big surprise! I’m not!
But, my best friend, Jared, and I did start digging out and collecting our own earwax ages ago. We kind of figured that earwax must be good for something! We just haven’t found out what yet!
We’ve been experimenting to try and find out if earwax is just stale, old yellow boogers or not. We think that everyone probably starts off with a clear liquid, called saliva, in their guts. But when you get the sniffles, your spit is sucked up past the back of your mouth and straight up into your nose. And that’s where it sits, hiding and slowly turning greeny-yellow. It then starts getting thicker, moldier, and slimier as it begins turning into awesome, gross boogers. Then when your nose is absolutely chockers full, bammm! your snot can be shot out of your nose at a hundred miles an hour. A massive cannon-blast, flying across the room, landing on your friend’s face or anything else that gets in its path.
So while some boogers get saved up in your nostrils and dug out later for a tasty snack, others simply slide right back down the back of your throat and get reswallowed. When those ones get sucked back up again, they’re starting to get nice and moldy!
And you know when someone sniffs so hard and long that it seems like they are going to suck in the cat or the missing Lego piece from under the couch? Well, Jared and I have figured out that when someone does that humongous sniff, that’s when the extra moldy boogers can be sucked from your stomach on to a super-highway straight up into your ears. As the boogers settle in, they get even staler, grosser, and more disgusting as they slowly turn into earwax. Every day they get thicker, cheesier, and greener until someone finally digs them out.
Jared always seems to have way more earwax than me and his is a sort of a dark browny-green color, while mine is a nicer lime green color. We each have our own jar that we keep by our bed at home and every night before going to sleep we do another earwax extraction to add to our collection. The trick is to slowly slide your pinky finger in at the top and twist it around and down. That way the wax gathers on the tip of your finger and you get a nice big dollop that pops right out with a slight wiggle of your finger.
One time, Jared just shoved his middle finger straight in all the way to the knuckle and gave it a massive twist! He had so much earwax in there that the moment he twisted his finger the wax squelched all around it and created an airtight seal! Every time he tried to pull his finger out he thought he was going to drag his brains out with the wax! And the longer his finger was stuck in there, the more set the earwax got, and the more set the earwax was, the more painful it was when he tried to pull it out!
After an hour, his mother had to take him to hospital … I wasn’t allowed to go, because I couldn’t stop laughing! His mom wasn’t impressed when the nurse called in another nurse for a look, who showed a doctor, who invited another doctor, who called in a specialist, who showed his students, who all scratched their heads until the hospital plumber walked by the door, saw the problem, pulled out his drain clearer grips, stepped into the room, grabbed Jared’s finger, gave it a twist, and POP! Out it came!
The awesome thing was that the nurse then drained both of Jared’s ears. He said they got a whole bucket of wax.
The bummer was that his mom wouldn’t let him bring it home. Darn!
But, every now and again we compare our earwax jars and check out how much we’ve collected. We use the wax to conduct some really interesting experiments.
Experiment 1: Consistency—We both take a good blob of earwax from our jar and hold it between the thumb and index finger—that’s the one next to your thumb. We then slowly stretch our fingers wider and wider apart. The moment the earwax splits into two parts we measure the gap between our thumb and finger. When he did it, Jared’s fingers were only twelve millimeters apart, proving that his earwax is really thick and chunky. While the gap between my fingers was fifty-three millimeters! Obviously, my earwax is waaay stretchier than his!
Experiment 2: Texture—Next we take a good blob of my earwax and both of us smear it across our left cheek. Then we do the same across the right cheek with a blob of Jared’s earwax. As we rub the earwax all over our cheeks we’re able to compare the texture and graininess of the wax. We both agreed that Jared’s earwax was definitely rougher and drier, while mine was smoother, runnier, and definitely soaked into our skin more quickly.
Experiment 3: Taste—The taste test is definitely the worst experiment! If you’ve never tasted your own earwax, or someone else’s, maybe you should! I double dog doo doo dare you to! It tastes kind of like that green wasabi stuff, or those red hot Mexican chilli peppers. And I don’t mean that it’s hot and spicy. I mean that you definitely don’t want to go sticking your big fat finger into your ear, wiggling it about, yanking out a heap on the end of your finger, and shoving it in your mouth—unless you reeeally want to throw up! Just put a tiny bit of earwax on the tip of your finger and lightly touch it to your tongue.
Ewwwwwwwwwww! It’s so bad! It’s positively the worst, most disgusting, grossest taste ever! It’s impossible to describe. But back to our quest to find out what we could use this stuff for. Once we each had a couple of small jars full of wax, well naturally the first thing we thought of was candles. If we could make candles with our earwax, then we could sell the idea to some big candle company and we’d be rich! The very first totally environmental, human candles!
We set to work right away by stealing a brand new box of Mom’s little tea light candles. They’re not your regular sized table candles; they’re these small candles only about the size of a large coin, and about one and a half centimeters tall. They sit in a thin, aluminum holder and only burn for about thirty minutes or so. Mom puts them all around the edge of the bathtub whenever she has a bath. She says that the candlelight and smell relaxes her. I think she just doesn’t want to turn on the light and scare herself in the mirror!
We figured the little candleholders were the perfect sized containers to make our earwax candles in. Finally, after what seemed like endless years of fussing around, Mom headed into town to do the shopping. This was our chance. We zipped into the bathroom, grabbed her brand new box of fancy little candles, and yanked them out of the small aluminum containers. Then we threw the candles into the sink and began smashing them to pieces with the meat-masher hammer. As soon as we’d managed to get all of the wicks out, we turned on both taps full bore and washed all of the smashed up wax down the drain … We probably shouldn’t have done that though, as the smell was so flowery and girly that it nearly made us want to throw up.
Next, we scraped every tiny little bit of ear wax from our jars into Mom’s saucepan and turned on the stove to start heating it up. While the wax bubbled away we arranged the little containers in rows on the table, ready to fill. As soon as our earwax was melted we very carefully carried the pot across to the table where we poured the wax into the small containers, before poking the wicks into the hot liquid. Two hours later, they had set. It had worked perfectly! And the smell was definitely way better than the woozy, flowery version that Mom had. Our pot gave off an awesome, strong, manly smell. Like when you’ve been playing soccer all day long, in the middle of the desert in the hot sun, and you take your shirt off and shove your nose right in under the middle of your armpit and take a big long snnnnniff!
Beautiful! I was sure Mom would definitely love the smell of our candles way more than hers!
We decided to test just how much more Mom would love the smell by not telling her we replaced her candles. That way it would be a wonderful surprise and we could get her honest reaction before we became rich by selling our candles to a candle company!
We carefully put our candles back in the original box and taped it closed.
That night I heard the familiar sound of the bath taps being turned on, jus
t as I was getting ready for bed. I quickly shot Jared a message. This was it. We were on the brink of becoming millionaires, maybe even multimillionaires! I could hear Mom getting ready to have her weekly “leave me alone I’m in the bath” relaxation. I sat quietly in my room with Jared on the phone. We waited, listening for a sign. Finally, the taps turned off and the light shining around the edges of the doorframe flicked off. I could see the warm, dimly flickering light of the candles below the door. Yes! She was using our candles!
There was the sound of water gently slooshing about as Mom submerged herself into the bathtub, followed by silence. Mom was obviously drifting away into her relaxation mode. I tiptoed down the hallway, sneaking closer to the door, and took in a huge breath. I could definitely smell the candles wafting through the gaps around the door. The smell was definitely manly! I raised an arm and took a deep whiff of my own armpit. Yep, same manly smell.
I could hear Mom sniffing over and over. Wow, she obviously couldn’t get enough of the incredible scent.
I couldn’t help but smile at our success and was just about to text Jared with the awesome news when suddenly there was a heap of splashing, swearing, grunts, and groans coming from inside the bathroom. Weird.
“Are you OK Mom?” I called, wondering what was happening.
“OMG!” she yelled. “I paid a ridiculous amount of money for these candles! They’re supposed to be relaxing, take away all of your stress, and make you feel as if you’re floating on clouds. They’re supposed to be made with some sort of incredibly rare flowers from the top of a mountain. They are supposed to smell like the flower gardens of heaven. What a load of crap! They smell like the disgustingly foul toilet bowls of a soccer team on laxatives!” She was so angry! She went on and on while slipping and splashing about as she tried to get out of the bathtub as fast as possible—obviously trying to blow the candles out quickly before she threw up.