The Big Book of Boy Stuff

by Bart King

  Before people arrive, think about if you want to have dancing, games, or activities in different parts of the house. Then get organized! Also, make sure that you have a disposable or digital camera around to take pictures with; kids love to ham it up for the camera!

  Naturally, there should be lots of munchies once people arrive. I’m getting hungry just thinking about all the pizza, chips, sandwiches, and soda you’ll load up your guests with.

  Once people do start to arrive, remember: You’re the host. That means that it’s your job to make sure that everyone is having fun. You can’t just talk to your best friends; you need to talk to everyone who is there.

  Make sure that music is playing and everyone can hear it. If you have a friend who is responsible, have them be the DJ. Most people love to be the DJ, but other people will try to give the DJ suggestions for music. Pick someone for this job who can handle the pressure.

  By the way, make sure that your parents are present. Although that sounds crazy, you know that kids (especially boys!) act differently if there are adults around. To prevent the possibility of broken dishes and broken bones, your parents need to be in the house. They might be squirreled into a back room, but just knowing that they’re there will give you peace of mind.

  Finally, I’ll remind you again to make sure that people are having fun. Talk to everybody; don’t stay in any one place too long. If you see someone who doesn’t seem to know the other partiers, introduce them around or get them involved in an activity.

  Bullies

  When I was a kid, everyone was always trying to convince me that bullies were actually cowards. If you just stood up to the bullies, they would chicken out and leave you alone.

  What a bunch of baloney.

  Bullies can be cowards, but don’t bet on it. They can also be over-confident jerks with an itchin’ to pop you a good one upside your head.

  Because every bully is a little different from the last one, you can’t deal with them all the same. Some bullies just want you to avoid them. If you do avoid them, life is good. Other bullies will notice that you are trying to avoid them, and this makes them look for you. So what should you do?

  Use your head and use your feet.

  Use your head to keep away from bullies. It is useful to “tell on” some bullies. Once they get in trouble with an adult and/or their parents, they know that you will stick up for yourself, and they will leave you alone.

  The more hard core the bully is, the less this strategy works. Decide how tough your bully is before turning them in. Use your head. Don’t put yourself in situations where you are by yourself or in areas where there is no escape.

  What if it comes down to a fight? It’s you and the bully! Use your head: Is this kid your age or size? Do you think a fight will solve the problem? Are you ready to stick up for yourself?

  If it doesn’t look like fighting is a good idea, don’t wait around to get pummeled. Use your feet. Your best weapons in a fight are your feet. Not to use for kung fu kicks! Use your feet to run away.

  By the way, everyone asks themselves this question when bothered by a bully: “Why me?” Remember, although bullies may not always be cowards, they are almost always jerks with personal problems. If it wasn’t you, they would be bothering someone else. Try to think of it that way; you are providing a valuable service to society by keeping your bully off of someone else’s case! Just don’t take it personally.

  *Experts agree that if you can remove a bully’s lungs, he will be less likely to bother you.

  Follow-Up Activity

  Make friends with the toughest girl at your school. If a bully ever messes with you, politely ask the girl to pull out the bully’s lungs. When she is done, keep the lungs in your locker as a souvenir.

  Gross Stuff!

  The title of this chapter says it all. If you are ready to learn about disgusting, nauseating, and otherwise gross items, batten down the hatches and read on!

  Barfing Department

  Have you ever eaten something rotten? Or maybe you rode in the car too long, and your last meal wasn’t sitting well? Your body has a solution to the problem! You can retch, backwards bungee, vomit, make stew, hurl, blow, upchuck, heave, throw soup, feed the fish, puke, or even regurgitate! But no matter what you call it, it’s never any fun.

  You barf when your stomach decides that a mistake has been made. Barfing is usually caused by motion sickness (boats and roller coasters are prime offenders), eating food with a lot of bacteria in it, or eating too fast and/or too much all at once. Now everything must go! But your body is very thoughtful. It sends you some signals before you blow chunks so that you can get ready. You get a horrible feeling that something bad is going to happen. Your mouth starts producing a lot of spit. You’re in a cold sweat. And then...blauuuug!

  Your stomach is a big muscle. It heaves and contracts and brings up a whole mess when you barf. Barf is full of stomach acid, which is why it leaves a rotten taste in your mouth. Be sure to brush your teeth after barfing because the acid can stain your teeth; besides, you’ll feel a lot better. (The worst feeling in the world is when your mouth isn’t all the way open when you barf and some puke squirts out your nose! Aaagg!)

  Don’t feel bad if you puke in public. After all, an American president gave the most famous barfing performance of all time! In 1992, President George Bush Sr. was in Tokyo at an important dinner. He wasn’t feeling well, and he ended up spewing into the lap of the Japanese prime minister and then falling on him. Nasty. It was all caught on television cameras, and the Japanese invented a new word in honor of the moment. Bushuru: To vomit in a public place.

  If your puke is ever green, congratulations. You managed to throw up something that’s not from your stomach at all. Green barf has bile in it, and bile comes from a spot way down near your small intestine. That means you had to dig down deep for that one. Good work!

  The scariest barf is called “projectile vomiting.” This is what happens when a baby heaves cheesy stuff that lands on the other side of the room. Sometimes a wad of projectile vomit can go right out the window.

  It is possible to vomit on purpose. By sticking a finger or other small item (like a feather) down the throat, a person can gag and vomit. Why would someone do this? In ancient Rome, the custom was to have huge feasts with many different kinds of food. If a person wanted to continue eating but was too full to do so, he visited the Vomitorium. This was an area to barf, where servants would clean up the mess. A philosopher from that time named Seneca once wrote that the Romans “vomit so that they may eat and eat so that they may vomit.”

  To avoid barfing, try pushing down on your wrist an inch or two up from your palm. (There are wristbands that do this for you.) This works well for motion sickness. A sip of ginger ale can mellow out your stomach, as can a saltine cracker if you’re not feeling well.

  There is a jet owned by NASA nicknamed the “Vomit Comet.” It is used to create “zero gravity” so that astronauts can train for outer space. The aircraft climbs and dives over and over, sometimes as many as 50 times.

  Funny Things to Say When Someone Barfs

  “Thar she blows!”

  “Abandon ship!”

  “He’s got the urge to regurgitate! Throw up all that food he ate! Vomit! Vomit! Yeahhhh, vomit!”

  Fun Barfing Facts

  You Make Me Want to Puke! Sea cucumbers can squirt out some or all of their guts when threatened. This is so disgusting, their would-be predator leaves. The puke is also sticky and tough. Some island cultures squirt sea cuke puke onto their feet like a pair of water shoes to protect their feet while they walk around in the water!

  When a cow chews its cud, it’s basically chewing its own barf!

  After an owl eats an entire mouse or other rodent, it barfs up the skin, bones, and other tough-to-digest parts in a nasty little ball called an “owl pellet.” Collect them all!

  Belly Button Lint, Toe Jam, and Earwax Department

  Here is a strange fact to consider
: You used to breathe through the hole in your stomach called your belly button. When you were in your mom’s womb, all of your oxygen went through the umbilical cord that connected to where your belly button is now. You couldn’t breathe with your lungs then; there was no air to breathe.

  Now that your “cord has been cut,” you use your lungs to breathe, leaving your belly button to gather dirt, dead skin, and cloth fabric. If you put all those ingredients together, you have lint! You might want to take a look in your belly button if you haven’t done so lately, because it can get pretty nasty if you don’t clean it out every so often.

  Paramedics once responded to a 911 call for an abdominal evisceration. This means someone’s guts were falling out! The paramedics went to a home and found a 13-year-old boy on a bed. When asked why he called 911, the boy said he had “stuff” coming out of his belly button. The paramedics investigated and found what the “stuff” was: belly button lint.

  Lint can gather other places too. Your feet are constantly sweating, so dirt, dead skin, and cloth (from your socks) make a nice little surprise for you between your toes. We call this toe jam, although some people actually have toe jelly. Whatever you call it, don’t save it up for a peanut butter sandwich. If you don’t know why not, just read the “Barf” section in this chapter.

  There is a place in Dawson City, in the Yukon territory of Canada, where adults can try a drink that has an actual human toe in it. It is called the Sour Toe Cocktail. The toe is a real human toe that has been preserved in alcohol and is put into drinks. As the story goes, the first toe came from the frostbitten foot of a trapper. That toe was accidentally swallowed when someone drank the cocktail too fast, and so the toe has been replaced a few times since then.

  As for earwax, it is also easy to make. Just take some dead skin and mix it with the oils that are naturally in your ear. Throw in a little of the dirt that floats in your ear, and you have earwax! (I wonder why nobody ever makes candles from the stuff?) There is a woman in New England who uses earwax on her lips as a cheap alternative to lip balm, but you’re probably not interested in that.

  Earwax can sometimes build up to the point where it clogs the whole ear. There is nothing as surprising as innocently putting your finger in your ear and coming out with a brown chunk of gunk. Some people suffer from ceruminosis (see-roo-min-o-sis), or too much earwax. I once had a friend named Ben who thought he was going deaf in one ear. The doctor stuck a small metal instrument in his ear and pulled out an orange cork that had plugged up his hearing hole. He could hear again! The first thing he heard was the doctor saying, “That is disgusting.”

  Ben got off easy, though. Cockroaches like to find small, dark, greasy hiding places to hide out in. Guess where they sometimes go? “Nooooooooo!”

  Burping and Belching Department

  Burping and belching are the same thing. You know how to burp, right? Heck, you’ve been doing it ever since you were born; you would swallow down air while sucking on your bottle, and then your parents would burp you. Why is belching so cool? Because everyone does it and it makes a fun noise.

  In some cultures, a good belch after a meal is a sign of good manners. Of course, you don’t live in one of those cultures, but never mind that.

  Tips on Belching

  Belching is simply a way of relieving excess gas in your stomach through the mouth. Some people can belch on command; these people have a belching super-power! However, most of us need a little help to belch. Fizzy drinks are always a good source for that extra gas.

  Get a fizzy drink. Do not shake it! This will cause the can or bottle to burp on you when it opens! Instead, open it normally. If you have a straw, use it. Straws put more air in your system. Or just slowly drink a few mouthfuls, swirling the drink around in your mouth before swallowing. When you’ve built up enough gas, let ‘er rip!

  One good thing to have when you burp is gravity. This allows only the air to come up from your stomach. Astronauts in outer space have learned to try and never burp: If they do, there’s a good chance that EVERYTHING in the stomach will come up at once.

  There are many different things that one can do with a burp. Try some of the special belch varieties below.

  Volume: How loud can you belch? Can you scare the dog? Can you make your grandmother’s wig jump off her head?

  Grossness: Can you make it sound wet?

  Length: How lonnnng can you burp? Keep going till you run out of breath.

  Tricks: Can you say something while you are burping? Try saying a funny phrase; it will be that much funnier if you’re belching when you say it! How about a belch that sounds really low or high? Try saying the “ABCs” with one burp!

  Warning: Do not do this in front of visiting relatives, important visitors, or the President of the United States. Also, never try too hard to burp! You may bring up something besides gas. (See the “Barfing Department.”)

  And remember...Always say, “Please pardon me,” after a good belch!

  Fun Belching Facts

  A good belch can escape your body at 50 miles per hour!

  If you would like to use a fancy word for belching, try “eructation.” (ee-ruk-tay-shun)

  People belch, even when they are asleep! “Zzzzzz...buuurrrrpp!”

  Back Off, Monkey Boy! Orangutans use loud belches to warn intruders away from their territory.

  B.O. (Body Odor) and Sweat Department

  I’ve got some bad news for you: Men sweat about 40 percent more than women. Heck, your feet alone sweat out a 1/4 cup of sweat a day. Dang it, you are disgusting! If you don’t sweat much now, don’t worry. You will. Once you become a teenager, you’ll be a sweaty beast with reeking pit stains. The good news is that sweat doesn’t stink. Hurray! The bad news is that bacteria that grow in your sweat do stink.

  Germs called bacteria live all over the outside and inside of your body. As soon as you sweat, bacteria start swarming all over your skin. Then you reek! But remember, it is not your fault.

  The skin of your face has about two million bacteria on it. That’s actually pretty good compared to your armpits. The skin on your pits is home to 516,000 bacteria per square inch. But both your face and your armpits have to take the backseat to your mouth. More than 10 billion creatures live in there. Can you taste them? They can taste you! If you have bad breath, they are the reason why. Now go buy some mouthwash.

  You may bathe or shower every day, but different cultures have different ways of looking at bathing, body odor, and bacteria. In France, over 50 percent of the people don’t bathe every day, 50 percent of the men don’t use deodorant daily, and 40 percent of the men don’t change their underwear daily. You add up all those “don’ts” and someone smells like “doo-doo.”

  *It is possible to give off three gallons of sweat on a hot day.

  *In outer space, your B.O. doesn’t leave your body; it surrounds you in a tight, stinky cloud!

  Bombing Department

  Some people call this tooting or farting. In this book, I will call it bombing. This is what happens when gas comes out your back end: You drop a bomb! Sometimes it is noisy and sometimes it is quiet, but it’s usually stinky. Bombs are like belches; they are funny because they make a weird sound and everybody does it. And I mean everybody. Benjamin Franklin, founding father of the United States, even wrote a book called Fart Proudly!

  So where do your bombs come from? Part of a bomb comes from swallowing air while you suck on candy, chew gum, and eat. People who gulp their food usually bomb more than those who don’t. But your body also makes gas naturally. As you digest food, gases are created in your intestines and will exit your back end faster than 30 miles per hour.

  How big, long, and stinky your bomb will be depends on how long you’ve been holding it in and what you’ve been eating. Another factor is what kind of bacteria you have in your intestines. The bacteria are what give your bombs a gas called methane. (Methane is an important gas because it can catch on fire!) Bacteria bombs with a lot of methane tend to be
hot, stinky, and silent! A bacteria bomb is known as an “SBD” — “Silent But Deadly.”

  The most embarrassing thing known to mankind is to bomb and have the whole world know it was you. Long ago, a gentleman was in the court of Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603) of England. He bowed to her and accidentally bombed loudly. Everyone heard! The man was so humiliated, he traveled away from England for seven years before returning to the queen’s court. Once he returned, Queen Elizabeth smiled and said, “My Lord, I had forgot the fart.”

  Tips on Bombing

  If you want to bomb, enjoy a helping of raisins, corn, white bread, cheese, bell peppers, turkey, onions, broccoli, cabbage, or brussels sprouts. Then sit back, relax, and watch the sparks fly. Want loud bombs? Eat some beans! You know what they say: Beans on Saturday, bubble bath on Sunday. Want stinky bombs? Eat prunes, bran, cauliflower, or a lot of meat. Hard-boiled eggs are good for these bombs because an egg yolk contains sulphur, which is what creates the terrible smell of rotten eggs. (If you want to just make the sound of a bomb without the smell, go to the end of the “Making Faces! Making Sounds!” chapter.)

  Good News: Farts usually break up pretty quickly, so if nobody has smelled yours within a few seconds, you’ve gotten away with it. (This is not true if you are in a small space like an elevator, a classroom, or Rhode Island.)

  Bad News: Your nose will never be more sensitive to bad smells than when you are about ten years old. So if you’re in a small space like an elevator, a classroom, or Rhode Island, breathe through your mouth just in case.