The Big Book of Girl Stuff Read online

  Be patient and wait for the Mean Girl to either move to another state or to stop being mean. (It’s fun to wish.)

  Let your own sense of humor help you.

  Having a sense of humor about life might not solve your problems, but it will make things better. If you can laugh at the Mean Girl (and yourself), somehow it relieves the tension and makes the world a better place. Your humor may be shown when you smile to yourself at how lame the Mean Girl is when she is nasty.

  You can also use humor for self-defense. For example, if you hear a Mean Girl diss your friend, sincerely say, “Wow, and she always says such sweet things about you.” Or if a Mean Girl disses you, say, “May the cubes from a hundred ice trays fill your bra.” The Mean Girl probably won’t get it, but you’ll be able to smile and walk away. (BTW, that’s why they call these one-liners. You use ONE, and then move on while you’re still ahead. Don’t get into a cut-down contest.)

  Wait! We Have an Important Question

  Have YOU ever been a Mean Girl? It’s possible, you know! Have you ever treated someone as an enemy for no good reason? Has jealousy or competition ever made you treat someone badly? This is a good thing to wonder about from time to time. It keeps us honest!

  Comebacks to Save for a Mean Girl on a Rainy Day

  Have you been getting a lot of “get well” cards?

  Your outfit must be reversible. Try it inside out. You’ve got nothing to lose!

  Are you getting dizzy? Because the world is revolving around you really fast.

  You put the duh in dumb.

  Two words: Fashion roadkill.

  From your hair to your smile to your personality: Fake, fake, fake!

  Nice top. Who shot the sofa?

  Would you like to borrow my baseball mitt so you can catch a clue?

  Looking at her clothes: Somewhere there’s a horse missing its blanket.

  The worst thing to say to a mean girl: You are a total waste of makeup.

  Mean Girl Strategy Tip

  If you’re outgoing and don’t mind making a scene, just scream “What is your problem?!” to a Mean Girl when she bothers you. This will be sooo embarrassing for her that the Mean Girl might just avoid you in the future.

  Other Useful Terms for Self-Defense

  A skinny mean girl is a “skeletor.” Mean Girls at the mall are “hags with bags.” Other useful words include Ditz, Girl-Goyle, Thicko, Icky, Fluff ’n’ Stuff, Eejit, Ninny, and Barbie.

  Jerks

  “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

  —Eleanor Roosevelt

  Boy bullies (also known as Jerks or Creeps) tend to be insulting. A Jerk usually wants to hurt your feelings or get you angry. Whatever a Jerk says to you, try to keep your cool. If you get upset, that’s exactly what he wanted. After all, consider the source: A boy who doesn’t know anything about you? Please. His opinion shouldn’t count for anything.

  So how should you deal with a Jerk? If a Jerk says something mean to you and you just blush and walk away, that encourages him. He has no reason to leave you alone because you’re an easy victim!

  All of us fantasize about what we wish we said to the mean person who insulted us. Maybe it would be better to just SAY it and not wish we had. Sadly, there is no perfect thing to say to a Jerk, but try something odd enough to startle him and make him think.

  Jerk: Why are you so flat?

  Girl: I loaned my chest to a friend of mine. Maybe a friend of yours with a brain will do the same thing for you.

  After saying something unexpected (“You look like amphibian poop!”), be sure to walk away while the Jerk tries to figure it out. Other odd things to say to Jerks that will buy you some “walking away” time include Pelican Head, Biscuit Pants, Idiot Boy, Dillweed, and Mouth-Breather. You get the idea.[6]

  If you want a slightly longer comeback, here are two of our favorites:

  Somebody’s been drinking a lot of Nerd Juice.

  Did your parents have any sons?

  *If a smart-alecky boy asks you if you wear “over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders,” ask HIM if he has on an “under-the-butt-nut-hut.” Then watch him back away in fear and confusion.

  Of course, there are always adults that might be able to help. Aside from the usual parents, teachers, and counselors, if you can find a way to speak to a Jerk’s mother, your problems may be solved. The odds are that if she finds out her little Junior is being mean to girls, he’ll be in BIG trouble. If you need to talk to a teacher or your parents to get word to the Jerk’s mom, then talk to a teacher or your parents.

  *Want to get the last laugh? Move to Russia. Women there live an average of 13 years longer than men!

  Special Note

  There is a special kind of Jerk who might be mean to you because he has a crush on you. He’s just too immature to know how to deal with his feelings. (We know this sounds like a lame movie idea, but it’s true!)

  Revenge!

  Yeah, yeah, we know that every book you’ve ever read and every adult you’ve ever known has said revenge is wrong. And it’s true. But stay tuned for an important news bulletin: Revenge won’t make you a better person, but it CAN make the world a better place.

  Here’s how: There are a lot of really bad things a person can’t get arrested for. For example, a girl can’t be arrested for lying or backstabbing someone. So what prevents her from doing that? Hopefully, her own conscience! But if that’s not enough, it’s probably the fear of revenge. Part of what keeps people in line is that someone might “get them back.”

  Wanting to get revenge on someone who’s done you wrong is an instinct. It satisfies a girl’s need for justice. It’s wrong, but it’s also natural. So maybe you feel like it’s time to get revenge. Here are the guidelines.

  Nobody can actually get hurt. Duh.

  You can’t wait more than a month to get revenge on someone. By then, your foe will have forgotten what she did wrong.

  YOU HAVE TO TAKE CREDIT FOR YOUR REVENGE. No whispers behind the person’s back, and no gossip. If you can’t do this, forget the whole thing.

  Since those are pretty tough guidelines to live by, you may want to try some other options instead. Think about the nasty things you may have done to other people before. The odds are, you have been the villain in another person’s revenge fantasy! And once you know that, it can help you to feel a little differently about your villain. Maybe you can’t forgive her, but at least you can rise above her.

  Finally, think about what a great life you have. Don’t let some nincompoop mess it up!

  *Five hundred years ago in China, a girl could take revenge by sprinkling chopped-up tiger whiskers in her foe’s food. Because chopped tiger whiskers have barbs, the victim would suffer uncomfortable digestion after eating.

  Which girl is really smiling?

  * * *

  [6] In case you don’t, you could also call a boy bully a gobdaw, fribble, drongo, chowderhead, muppet, apple-knocker, flapdoodle, gink, or a parrot face.

  Ick

  “A girl can hide her diary for years, but she can’t hide her disgust for one second.”

  —Korean proverb

  Things that are sort of disgusting or scary make us want to look away from them and at them at the same time. That’s why we cover our eyes during a horror movie, and then peek through our fingers. It’s sort of like a two-way magnet: It repels and attracts us!

  “What is icky?” is sort of the opposite of “What is beautiful?” You think that certain things are gross or beautiful because you’ve been taught that they are. (So maybe grossness is only skin deep!)

  That’s why little kids don’t think anything is gross or disgusting. For instance, two-year-olds don’t know what “icky” means. A toddler will put anything in his mouth, and we mean anything. To study this, researchers put grasshoppers into milk glasses and offered them to kids of different ages. The two- to three-year-olds just tried to drink the milk anyway. The four- to five-year-olds usually took the grassho
ppers out of the glasses and then tried to drink the milk. But by age seven, most kids understood the concept of “icky,” and they would not drink the milk once the grasshopper swam a few laps in the glass.

  But maybe we call the wrong things “icky.” For example, we are taught not to pick our noses because it’s disgusting. But a German doctor named Friedrich Bischinger believes that you should pick your nose, and also eat the boogers because it “is a great way of strengthening the body’s immune system.” His theory is that there is lots of bacteria in your nose, and by the time you digest the bacteria, it works like a medicine. (And boogers actually do have Vitamin C in them.) Could it be true? Nah!

  Ear Wax

  Let’s warm up with the lightweight icky stuff. You probably know that earwax is designed to catch dirt and keep it from getting into your ears and creating problems. What we bet you DON’T know is that earwax comes in two different types. Asian and Native American people have “dry” earwax, which is gray and hard. Hispanics, blacks, and white people have “wet” earwax, which tends to be orange and oily. So now you know the earwax difference! (And knowing is half the battle.)

  Health

  Is your heart in the right place? Some people have a condition called situs inversus. This is when a person’s internal organs are reversed. Instead of having your heart on your left side, it’s on your right side.

  The human body has all sorts of variations, and they’re more interesting than icky. For instance, between 1 and 2 people in 100 have an extra nipple somewhere on their body. Huh! And humans are sometimes born with a tail. These are usually removed by surgery shortly after birth.

  Bathroom Stuff

  What goes on in bathrooms happens behind a locked door for a reason. But sometimes a girl has to yell through the bathroom door and ask important questions like: “Who left the seat up?” or “Can you bring me some toilet paper?”

  It’s very annoying that boys don’t put the seat down. But for some reason, not only do most guys like to pee standing up, they also like to pee onto or into something. If a boy was all alone in a huge field, with only one tree really FAR away, he would hike to the tree and pee against it. It must be an instinct!

  If you have trouble with men leaving the seat up in your house, you may want to get a German invention called the Water Closet Ghost. The WC Ghost is installed on the back of the toilet seat. It has a voice that is activated when the seat is lifted. It scolds the person for having the bad manners to lift the seat and reminds him to put it back down when he’s done. Almost two million of these have been sold in Europe!

  *The German slang word sitzpinkler means “man who sits to pee.” It also means “wimp.”

  Flush, or Else! It is illegal to NOT flush a toilet in Singapore. Talk about an embarrassing ticket to get!

  A British woman named Barbara May has invented a portable toilet for vans and SUVs. Called the Indipod, this device makes it possible to drive from say, New York to Los Angeles, without using any public restrooms. So if you’re “on the go” and you HAVE to go, you can GO!

  Is your bladder shy? Seven percent of girls and boys have a condition know as “shy bladder.” This condition makes it impossible to pee when someone else is nearby. The person can’t relax and “let go” unless she’s alone. If you ever have a problem with this, try thinking of Niagara Falls. And be thankful you’re a girl and that you get stall privacy. Boys with shy bladder have to stand at the urinal with strangers to the left and the right, staring at the wall and trying to pretend those other people aren’t there. That can’t be easy.

  *A little less than 50 percent of people get weird-smelling pee after eating asparagus.

  Different cultures have different attitudes about pee. In the United States, people avoid it like crazy. You probably wash your hands carefully after going pee, but pee has no germs. It’s sterile! Pee actually kills germs because it has ammonia in it. (Wash your hands anyway, though.)

  Other cultures are not as worried about pee; as a matter of fact, some think that it’s good for you! This theory is called “urine therapy” (thera-pee!) and it has been used in India longer than anyone can remember. In urine therapy, people use pee for eardrops, lotion, and even as medicine to be swallowed. (Gulp!) Believers argue that pee is good for colds, the flu, asthma, and a number of other problems. Pee contains urea, which is a protein often found in lotions, and it’s supposedly good for curing acne. As a matter of fact, an old Mexican custom was to use a boy’s warm urine on skin rashes.

  *The average girl will pee about 7,500 gallons of urine in her lifetime.

  We almost hate to mention poop, because it isn’t ladylike. But it turns out that poop can actually be useful! For example, in Japan, it can be found in beauty products. The Tokyo Sewer Bureau heats and squishes poop until it looks like marble. This “stone” can then be used in bricks, for vases, and even for earrings or necklaces. It is called “metro-marble,” but if you want to call it “butt jewelry,” we’ll understand.

  Since we humans have been around for thousands of years, people have needed to wipe “the dew off the lily” for a long time. But toilet paper wasn’t even invented until a few hundred years ago! The first toilet paper was made in China, and it measured two-by-three feet. Either the emperor had a huge butt, or he used a portion and folded it, then used a different portion and folded it. Toilet origami!

  *The average American girl uses 57 sheets of toilet paper daily.

  In the United States, cheap toilet paper on a roll wasn’t available until the 1880s. Our question is, WHAT THE HECK were people wiping their bums with all those years? As it turns out, your ancestors probably used a lot of moss, grass, straw, and leaves. There were also more creative “wipers” as well. Here are some of them:

  Cold weather folks like Eskimos and Siberians used snow. Brrrr!!

  The Vikings used handfuls of wool. Other people in the Middle Ages used “gompf” sticks, which were designed to, uh, scrape. (Yikes!)

  Early American settlers used corncobs. We have no comment.

  French big shots used pretty lace napkins. (What a waste!)

  Ancient Romans had a short stick with a sponge attached to the end of it. The sponge was soaked in salt water and then rubbed around. (This actually seems like it would work pretty well!)

  Many campers desperate to wipe with something have accidentally grabbed the leaves of poison oak. As you know, this results in itching and swelling. Please put this book down now and try not to think about it.

  Very Disturbing News: Even though you can buy it at any market, 3 percent of Americans don’t use any toilet paper at all!

  Gas

  We all know how horrible it is when somebody “hotboxes” or passes gas in an enclosed space. Believe it or not, this is actually against school rules in some places. For example, in Ireland, a boy hotboxed horribly in a classroom. He admitted to being a WMD (Weapon of Mass Distraction) and was suspended from school for two days. (Maybe the most important rule he broke was that you’re never supposed to admit it!)

  As you know, if somebody passes gas, the guilty party (always a boy!) will deny the gas is his, saying, “She who smelt it, dealt it.” We encourage you to use any of these useful comebacks to that lame phrase:

  He who rejected it, ejected it.

  He who denied it, refried it.

  He who contradicts it, made the butt bongo mix for it.

  He who disowned it, should atone for it.

  He who declined it, land-mined it.

  The Devil Made Me Do It! Pumpernickel bread is a German rye bread. The name roughly translates to farting devil bread. That’s because your body creates a lot of gas trying to digest the nickels. (And the Pumper is no picnic either.)

  Food

  So here’s the thing. People in certain parts of the world eat lots of things we might find unusual. They might feel the same way about your food, for example mayonnaise or beef. But can we accept their choices and not think of their food as “gross”? For example, in
Peru and Argentina, many people consider cat meat a delicacy. If you think that’s gross, how is eating a cow or a pig better than eating a cat?

  And if one culture eats cats, you just know that another one will eat dogs. One Native American tribe’s name (the Arapahoe) actually means “dog-eater.” In southern China and Korea, dog is considered a good food for the winter months.

  Even though guinea pigs are only a mouthful, people have enjoyed eating them in Peru for the last 4,500 years. Peruvians say that the pig tastes like cat. That seems odd; shouldn’t it taste like pork? Or chicken?

  It’s no secret that humans eat different kinds of birds, but you may not know that people also eat birds’ nests. In Southeast Asia, swifts build nests high on ocean cliffs. The nests are made from moss, seaweed, hair, fish parts, twigs, and mostly from bird spit. We don’t know who came up with the bright idea of taking a nest and putting it into a soup, but take our word for it: Birds’ nest soup is popular and expensive. A good bowl of it can cost hundreds of dollars!

  Surprisingly, the two foods we’ve saved for last are from plants. First up is the large and dangerously spiked Southeast Asian fruit called durian. This fruit smells so bad, it is illegal to have in Singapore. (It has an odor somewhere between moldy cheese and really moldy cheese.) If you break open the 12-pound fruit and survive the aroma, you’re ready to eat its pudding-like pulp. It stinks so much that eating the durian has been compared to “eating ice cream in an outhouse.”