The Big Book of Gross Stuff Read online

  A study of one-dollar bills being used at a high-school snack stand found that 92 percent of the bills had some germs on them. And 7 percent of the bills had harmful bacteria (like Staphylococcus aureus and Klebsiella pneumoniae) that can cause serious illness!

  Moral: Wash your hands after handling money.

  But whether it’s logical or not, disgust can help to educate us. For example, there are places in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh where people have been pooping out in the open for centuries. And because of this tradition, the people can see no reason to change their ways, even after new indoor bathrooms are built!

  And so sanitation experts have learned this effective technique: they present an outdoor feast for the people of a village. This feast takes place near the spot where the people poop. While the villagers gather to eat and talk, the sanitation experts quietly scoop up some of the human poop that’s nearby onto a plate. Then they set this plate near the food. Soon, flies come to land on the poop. Then the flies land on the food. No speech could ever make the reality of gross contamination more obvious!

  And the next time the experts visit the village, the odds are that the people will be healthier because they’re using their new indoor bathrooms.

  Thanks, gross stuff!

  * * *

  [1] Other hated words included vomit, ointment, and slacks. As one smarty-pants said, “I hate that my slacks are moist from where I vomited ointment on them.”

  [2] “ ‘We ought to debag him,’ he cried. Appleby was thereupon debagged; but as...he continued to walk about trouserless and dispense hospitality without any apparent loss of dignity, the debagging had to be written down a failure.” Edward Compton Mackenzie, Sinister Street.

  [3] A study done in 2002 by the London School of Hygiene showed that young people are easier to gross out. (So much for prissy old-timers!) Also, women are easier to gross out than men. (What a stunner!)

  [4] Eye juice, or what you humans call “tears.”

  Gross Quiz!

  Before you read any further, you might want to take this important quiz to learn how your views compare to the rest of society.

  What’s the proper age to stop farting in public?

  a. 9

  b. 19

  c. I will be farting at my own funeral.

  You go to someone’s house for dinner and find that they have made baby rabbit stew and lamprey surprise. (“Surprise! We made lampreys!”) You...

  a. Flee the house screaming.

  b. Eat a little bit of the food while smiling politely.

  c. Ask, “Could I have more baby rabbits, please?”

  Which of the following best describes your maturity level?

  a. You’ve always gotten along better with adults than kids.

  b. You’re as mature as most people your age.

  c. Hee hee! “Mature” rhymes with “manure”!

  Eep! Somebody cut a bad one. You . . .

  a. Organize a protest march.

  b. Breathe through your mouth.

  c. Compliment the offender.

  Driving along, you see some roadkill, perhaps an unlucky armadillo or luwak (see p. 236). You . . .

  a. Turn up the radio and accelerate.

  b. Shake your head sadly at the fate of all living things.

  c. Pull over and start searching your car for a spork.

  The phone rings. You are on the toilet. Do you answer it?

  a. No!

  b. Only if you are expecting a call.

  c. Yes, and you supply the caller with a play-by-play account of what’s happening.

  You overhear a customer at a clothing store ask for some pants with “maximum absorption.”

  a. You quickly distract yourself to avoid thinking about the situation.

  b. You wonder: Which absorbs more fluid, cotton or wool?

  c. You introduce yourself to the customer and show off how much fluid your trousers have already retained.

  If the alternative were starving to death, you would decide to eat . . .

  a. Haggis (see p. 253).

  b. Your worst enemy’s poop.

  c. A person.

  A friend of yours has something hanging from her nose, probably a booger. She doesn’t realize it. You . . .

  a. Concentrate on looking at her forehead and mentally go to your “happy place.”

  b. Make eye contact and then meaningfully point to your nose and make a swipe at it.

  c. Lean in and say, “You have lovely mucus.”

  If your brother says the word “sputum,” you wonder . . .

  a. Where your passport is, and how quickly you can book a flight to Italy.

  b. How he got such a big vocabulary.

  c. Whether he actually means mucus, snot, or phlegm (see p. 217).

  For each question you answered with the letter “a,” give yourself one point. For each question you answered with the letter “b,” give yourself two points. For each question you answered with the letter “c,” give yourself three points.

  If you scored from 10 to 14, you may be one of the following:

  The Accountant: “Dude, that’s the third time you’ve farted today.” Although the accountant does not tolerate gross stuff, he does a really good job of keeping track of it!

  The Prissy Over-Reactor: “I’ve never smelled anything so horrible in my LIFE!” Does this sound familiar? It should, because when it comes to making a big deal about gross stuff, this is you.

  The Faker: Are you really that squeamish? (Or is it possible that, while you say you can’t stand gross stuff, you secretly love it?)

  If you scored from 14 to 26, you may be:

  The Philosopher: You have a matter-of-fact way of looking at the world. Your relaxed attitude gives you good perspective, and so you are unlikely to get too worked up over gross stuff.

  If you scored from 27 to 30, you may be:

  The Enthusiast: You’re so enthusiastic about gross stuff, you always do everything bigger, stinkier, and with more mucus than your friends do. You may sometimes be viewed as a little creepy (and even subhuman!) by “normal” people. This is horribly unfair, except in cases where you actually ARE creepy and subhuman!

  The Miracle of Birth

  Trying to explain the facts of life to kids can be very tricky. So to get out of this, some adults just skip the whole thing. (“We found you in a pumpkin patch.”) More common are adults who only tell part of the story. For example, read this story about a five-year-old I’ll call “Timmy.” Timmy had just started kindergarten when his parents told him to expect a baby brother or sister sometime in the future.

  So at show-and-tell the next day, Timmy told his class the good news!

  A month later, Timmy’s mother was really beginning to show her pregnancy. She let Timmy put his hand on her stomach and feel the unborn baby moving inside her! After putting his hand on his mom’s belly, Timmy gave her a funny look.

  The next day at school, Timmy’s teacher asked, “What’s new with that baby your family is expecting?”

  Timmy looked around and whispered, “I think my mom ate it.”

  Oh no! Luckily, Timmy’s teacher explained to him that his mother hadn’t really eaten the baby. Good for her! Then she went on to say that there is probably nothing more wonderful and life affirming than seeing a baby being born. Yes, she told Timmy that witnessing a new person’s entry into the world is amazing. You get to see the first breath that person will ever take. And as a special bonus, babies are really cute!

  Lies, lies, LIES.

  Pick Your Poison!

  Until recently, women who couldn’t have babies didn’t have babies. But in 1966, doctors came up with a new fertility drug. The only way to make it, though, was to collect the urine of elderly women or to harvest pituitary glands from dead women.

  My research has revealed that the birth of a baby is one of the most disgusting things ever! Thank goodness you have no memories of this horrible nightmare.[5] I mean, come on! First,
the build-up for the big day takes months. (Nine of them, in fact.) And during this time, the pregnant mother blows chunks over and over again. This is because the hormones in her body throw her whole system out of whack. But it may also be nature’s way of preparing the mother for the grossness yet to come!

  Okay, sure, I’m exaggerating a little. Birth really IS a beautiful, wonderful miracle. But everyone already knows that. So to even it out a little, I’m here to concentrate on the gross stuff—

  Eating Poop for the Greater Good

  Just like humans, animals often “poop their pants” when giving birth. (Yes, yes, I know that most animals don’t wear pants.) And some of these animal mothers will then EAT the poop! Disgusting, you say? Maybe. Some people think this is a way for the animal to remove evidence of the birth so that enemies and predators won’t steal the newborns away. It’s also likely that mothers eat their own feces to keep vermin and insects away from their babies. (Or maybe it just tastes good!)

  Oh, rats. I don’t have the heart (or stomach!) to actually describe the birth of a baby. So I interviewed a female doctor who specializes in assisting with births. She said, “When I explain to my patients what giving birth is going to be like, I say, ‘You’ll have every different liquid in your body coming out of every orifice. It’s a rainbow of color!’ ”

  Wow, rainbows are pretty! And since there was a lot of pooping on the days that you and I were born, you can probably guess one of the colors of that rainbow. You see, when women have babies, they almost always “void their bowels.” So don’t act like poop doesn’t have anything to do with you. It always has, ever since Day One!

  If You Love Someone, Change His Diapers

  Is it possible for love to overcome disgust? Perhaps if you feel deep affection for a person, then he or she is less likely to gross you out. Think about parents! If love weren’t stifling a mother’s “disgust,” she’d run screaming the first time Little Junior smeared poo-poo on the cat.

  Still not convinced? To put this notion to the test, Dr. Betty Repacholi had mothers smell different pairs of poopy diapers and then rate their stinkiness. Did the mothers rate their own babies’ diapers as less disgusting? Yes! Were the babies’ diapers actually any less disgusting? Nope!

  So on everyone’s first birthday, there’s mucus, blood, poop, pee, body tissues, and a baby all showing up at once! But what does it sound like? Writer Michael Lewis listened to his child being born and described it as “the sound of a hairless dog escaping from quicksand.” There is also a lot of screaming.

  After the blessed event, there will be more screaming, some green poop, and then a lot of crying. Oh, yes, and green poop. Did I mention that babies make green poop? As a wise man once said, “The only things that should be green are unripe fruits and Martians.”

  Since I chickened out on describing the delivery, and since this book is about gross stuff, I guess I can’t get away without writing about the placenta. This is the lining inside a woman’s uterus or womb that supplies the nourishment for the baby. The problem is that once the baby is born, the placenta isn’t needed anymore. This means that after a baby enters the world, the show’s not over! There’s still a nutrient-rich sack of flesh (dripping red and gooey) that has to make its appearance. And when it does, you’ll know it. (Even if you don’t see it yourself, you’ll know the placenta has arrived when someone runs out of the delivery room with his hand over his mouth.)

  What’s That Kid’s Name Again?

  There are records from the 1700s of a Russian woman named Vassilyev who had 69 children. Keeping track of their birthdays was a little easier than you might guess because all of them shared birthdays! There were:

  4 sets of quadruplets (16 kids)

  7 sets of triplets (21 kids)

  16 pairs of twins (32 kids)

  Of course, some women choose to deliver their children at home. And sometimes they do this inside a big tub of warm water. That way the baby doesn’t feel such a huge shock coming out of the womb. But since a lot of things like the placenta come out with the baby, the people assisting with the delivery often use tropical fish nets to scoop all the chunks out of the tub’s water!

  “I’m ready when you are.”

  After the delivery of the baby, the placenta is placed with other biowastes for sanitary disposal (whatever that means!). In some cases, though, the placenta will be saved. Why? Because the new parents might want to plant a tree in their child’s honor, and the placenta is going to be placed at the bottom of the hole the tree goes into. Or sometimes the parents just want to put the placenta in the freezer for a memento. (Really.)

  And SOME parents take the placenta home and make a soup or pâté (cracker spread) out of it. Then they eat it. There might be a way for me to figure out WHY people do this, but I’m too busy throwing up right now to concentrate properly.

  But I Don’t WANT to Eat the Baby!

  It is customary in Japan to give new parents a gift. And then the parents give a less valuable gift in return. So a shop in the city of Fukuoka came up with the idea of parents giving out customized bags of rice for their return gifts. The bags are “named” for the new baby and have a photo of the wee one printed on the package. The rice bag even weighs the same as the new family member! Recipients of the gift apparently cuddle the rice baby. Then, later on, they open the baby package and eat its contents.

  * * *

  [5] If you do have memories of this horrible nightmare, please ignore that statement.

  The Stream of Life

  You should be proud. You’re the owner of your very own urinary bladder!

  “So what?” you ask. Well, your bladder is magic! It can change dramatically in size, going from a flat, deflated little bag (after you pee) to a softball-size balloon when you REALLY have to go. When your bladder is full, it holds about a pint of liquid gold.

  You deflate your bladder fairly often. (What a great sentence!) After you pee, you probably remember to wash your hands, right? That’s a good idea—except the germs you should worry about are the ones on the bathroom door, NOT the ones in your pee. That’s because there aren’t any germs in your pee!

  Hopefully this made astronaut Alan Shepard feel better about the time he wet his spacesuit. Shepard was the first American ever to travel into outer space. He was also the first to go wee-wee in a rocket. In 1961, Shepard was scheduled to launch on a short flight beyond Earth’s atmosphere. But flight delays left the astronaut stuck onboard for longer than planned. Since there was no bathroom for him to use, and he wasn’t allowed to get out of his spacesuit, Shepard was finally forced to pee inside it.

  Talk about ruining a wonderful moment!

  “Houston, we have a problem.”

  After that, spacesuits were designed with urine-collection bags and poop-containment devices. But wetting your spacesuit isn’t so bad.[6] In terms of germs, spit is way grosser than pee is. This is weird because you swallow spit, but you’re not going to drink your own pee. But would you drink someone else’s? It’s been said that the Chukchi people of Siberia would exchange drinks of urine with new friends and allies. And the Native Americans known as the Zuni used to hold a “urine dance” celebration where they would drink large amounts of pee. (Hey, I think I may have done a urine dance before!)

  If you wouldn’t drink the pee of a friend, what about the pee of a trusted animal? After all, cows can supply TWO important beverages to thirsty humans.

  1. milk

  2. urine

  You see, cows are greatly respected in India. Millions of people there consider cow urine to be good for the soul. Heck, Mahatma Gandhi drank a cup of the stuff each morning! That’s why an Indian group is planning to sell a soft drink made of cow urine. A group official says the drink will be sold as gau jal. (This translates to “cow water.”)

  If your Disgust Meter is now in the yellow, keep in mind that people used to add urine to beer and ale to make it stronger. (This process was called “lanting.”) Furthermore, doctors used to
taste their patients’ pee to check its flavor. If the pee tasted sweet, it was a sign that the patient might have diabetes. And finally, before you were born, you floated for months in fluids that contained your own baby pee!

  So what does urine taste like? The crew members of Ferdinand Magellan’s 1519 attempt to sail around the world can tell us. The sailors had to drink their own pee after a year and a half at sea. One of them wrote, “It was surprisingly not unsavory, having no worse a taste than a flagon . . . as many I have tasted before.” So maybe it’s not so bad! But is your Disgust Meter still in the yellow?