The Big Book of Boy Stuff

by Bart King

  Once the skunk’s stink is on you, it is almost impossible to get off. Some folks say that tomato juice can get rid of it. They’re wrong. All that will do is make you smell like tomato juice and skunk. Exposing yourself and your clothes to campfire smoke helps, as does a bath in water with baking soda mixed into it, followed by a vinegar rinse. But if you really want to stop a skunk from smelling, hold its nose! (That’s a joke.)

  “Who Let One?” Besides humans driving cars, the skunk’s only enemy is the owl. That’s because owls don’t have a sense of smell.

  Follow-Up Activity

  Go to a park and ask one of the rangers some of the following questions. Then make up some of your own.

  Are there any secret, unexplored parts of this park? If so, what is in those areas?

  I was bitten by a mosquito last night. Is it possible to spray the park to destroy all insect life?

  A coyote came into the campsite last night and ran off with my baloney sandwich. Who do I see about getting paid back for that?

  Gadgets, Tools, and Toys!

  Here is the story behind some of the devices that every boy should be familiar with.

  Compasses

  From where you are right now, there are four directions: North, South, East, and West. You should always know where these directions are! If you aren’t sure which way is which, think about where the sun rises and sets where you live. If you are north of the equator (but not too far north!), the sun will rise in the east and set in the west. But what if the sun is directly overhead or if it’s overcast?

  Go get a compass. The compass is a handy tool because it will almost always point to the north. Look at your compass dial; if the needle is pointing north, then the opposite direction of north will be south! West will be to the left of north and east will be to the right.

  Compasses are handy tools because of this. You know how one end of a magnet will attract another magnet, but if you reverse its end, it will repulse the other magnet? The planet Earth is a huge magnet, and the north end of the planet attracts other magnets. Your compass needle responds to this magnet and always shows you the way to the north. “Compass” north and “true” north are not quite the same thing. The magnetic north pole of the earth is actually about a thousand miles away from the “real” North Pole. This has to do with the fact the Earth is tilted on its axis as it rotates. The difference between true north and the compass is known as magnetic declination, and many maps show what the declination is.

  Duct Tape

  You may not have known it, but duct tape has magical powers; for example, it can get rid of warts! Army doctors have found that if duct tape is cut to fit over a wart, and then replaced once a week, the body’s immune system is stimulated. This means that the wart is attacked by soldiers from the body’s germ warfare system...wart be gone!

  Duct tape was first made in the early 1940s to keep ammunition dry during World War II. It was originally olive green, not silver. These days, duct tape comes in all the usual colors, plus hot pink, and one brand that comes in camouflage! Since this tape is waterproof, it was first called “duck tape.”

  But it was so useful, soldiers were quickly using it to fix jeeps, weapons, clothing, you name it. After the war, heat experts saw that the tape was a handy thing to use on heating ducts, and the new name of “duct tape” stuck.

  Although there are stronger tapes (like filament tape), duct tape, when doubled over onto itself, can pull a 2,000-pound car out of a ditch, and if they make it right, you can still rip it with your bare hands.

  Try an experiment: Throw your friend in a ditch, then wrap some duct tape around him. Now, with the help of some other people, see if you can pull him out. If this doesn’t work, just wrap him up completely in duct tape and make a duct tape mummy. It’s also fun to wrap up school binders in duct tape.

  Frisbee

  The world’s earliest Frisbees may have been used for weapons. Some stories tell of how Roman soldiers over two thousand years ago fought against enemies by throwing their small, round, sharp shields at them.

  Roman soldier: Hey, barbarian! Catch!

  Barbarian: I’ve got it! I’ve got it! I—I—Aaaiiii!”

  The next step that led to the invention of Frisbees was pies. In the 1920s, a Connecticut baker named William Russell Frisbie stamped his last name onto the tin pans in which his pies were sold. At some point, college students who had eaten the pies started throwing the pie tins through the air.

  Meanwhile, a man from California came up with the idea of a plastic flying saucer. He tried to sell his saucers with names like the Pluto Platter, the Sailing Satellite, the Sputnik, and the Flying Saucer.

  These sold okay in California, but not nationwide. The flying disc idea wouldn’t get off the ground from coast-to-coast.

  And then one day, the president of the Wham-O! toy company was at an East Coast college. He saw college students throwing around Frisbie’s pie-tin lids! The students told him they called the sport “Frisbie-ing” (after William Russell Frisbie). Wham-O! took the name, misspelled it as “Frisbee,” and in 1959, began releasing their new product, the flying Frisbee. A man named Ed Headrick perfected the Frisbee’s design so it would fly better, and the rest is history. Ed Headrick died in 2002. He was cremated and asked that his ashes be molded into some flying discs for his family and friends. May he fly high forever!

  G. I. Joe

  You’re a boy, and you don’t play with dolls. You play with action figures. And if you do, you’ve at least heard of that granddaddy of all action figures: G. I. Joe. This soldier came out in 1964. Hasbro, the company that created him, thought about calling him Skip the Navy Frogman or Rocky the Marine Paratrooper. They finally came up with Joe’s name from the World War II slang term for American soldiers: “Government Issue.”

  G. I. Joe was something new: A doll who came with his own flamethrower and bazooka. He was a little too warlike for some people. In 1993, a group called the Barbie Liberation Organization switched voice boxes between the talking G. I. Joe and the talking Barbie. The result was a Barbie that said things like, “Eat hot lead, Cobra!” and “Take this Jeep and get some ammo fast!” As for Joe, he got lines like, “Math is hard” and “Let’s go to the mall!”

  The very first G. I. Joe ever made was put up for auction in 2003 with an opening bid of more than $200,000!

  In a scientific survey of three boys at my school, it was agreed that G. I. Joe could beat up Barbie’s friend Ken.

  G. I. Joe’s bicep now measures bigger than his waist did in 1964.

  LEGO

  These building blocks have been called “the toy of the century” and they can fascinate a boy throughout his entire life. Between the fun colors and the perfect shapes (over 1,700 of them), anybody can become an architect of the future! Heck, if you just have 6 of the 8-studded bricks, you can combine them in over a million different ways. This is why LEGO bricks are so neat: They encourage creativity.

  The man who invented LEGO products was a furniture maker named Ole Kirk Christiansen. He enjoyed making wooden playthings for neighborhood children, and because he was good at this, Ole started making more money from his toys than from his “real” business. So Ole started a new business with a new name: LEGO. This word was formed by two words getting shoved together: leg godt. This means “play well” in Danish. (Coincidentally, it also means “I put together” in Latin!)

  Ole Kirk Christiansen started making his building bricks in 1949, and 12 years later, they were marketed in the United States. Today, the LEGO Company has sold so many building bricks, that there are more than 50 LEGO bricks for every human on the face of the planet. And they’re all lost under the couch.

  PEZ

  Although cigarettes are always bad for you, it is because of them that we have the wonderful invention of PEZ! Yes, it’s true! A man from Austria named Eduard Haas III made a brick-shaped candy from peppermint oil and sugar. He called it “PEZ”; the letters came from the first, middle, and last letters
of the German word for peppermint, PfeffErminZ.

  Mister Haas noticed that a lot of cigarette smokers used his candy as a breath mint to help cover up their disgusting habit. This gave him the idea to make a PEZ holder shaped like a cigarette lighter. The first holders came out in 1948, and they made eating candy fun. But the PEZ holder didn’t sell well in the United States. Haas thought about the problem, and decided to put a cartoon character’s head on top of the dispenser. (The first head was either Mickey Mouse or Popeye, depending on whom you talk to.) You tilted the PEZ head back and a single candy popped out. Haas also began making fruit-flavored PEZ.

  These new ideas worked like a charm. PEZ added to the fruit and peppermint types some unusual choices for flavors, like flowers, menthol, vitamins, and chlorophyll.

  The heads on top of the PEZ are also sometimes a little strange. The “Kooky Zoo” series had Roar the Lion, as well as a Cow, Yappy Dog, and Monkey Sailor. (That’s a kooky zoo, all right!) The “Pals/Jobs” series had a Doctor and a Fireman (makes sense), and also the Shell Boy (huh?), the Bride (is she a pal or a job?), a Knight (nice work if you can find it), a Maharajah, and a Pirate (who probably is a crummy example of both a pal and a future job.)

  *My all-time favorite PEZ heads are Coach Whistle and the Psychedelic Eye.

  Pocketknives

  What is it about a pocketknife that we like? They have a sharp blade and they fold up and fit into our pocket. They’re fun to hold and to goof around with. (Of course, pocket tools like the Leatherman Pocket Survival Tool are also cool!)

  Folding pocketknives were made 2,000 years ago for Roman soldiers. These old knives had folding blades and many attachments, including a spoon and a fork. Even so, most people throughout history have preferred to carry around big knives on their belts. They were more impressive and they scared troublemakers away! It wasn’t until about 400 years ago that the pocketknife got really popular (especially in America) because of its convenience for all kinds of people.

  Here are some things to be aware of with your pocketknife. Whenever you are sharpening or cutting something with the blade, always move your stroke away from you! This will reduce the chances of cutting or stabbing yourself. It would be embarrassing to talk your parents into buying you a pocketknife and then have this happen.

  Timmy: Mom, I have something to tell you.

  Mother: Timmy, I see that you have a pocketknife sticking out of your chest.

  Timmy: That’s what I wanted to tell you.

  Whittling

  This is an easy and fun thing to do with your knife. You simply pick up a piece of wood and start cutting it down to size. Some people wear leather gloves when they whittle, so that they don’t end up whittling their own hands by accident. To prevent a painful cut, make sure that the wood you pick up is not too hard and/or dead. That will make your blade stick, making an accident more likely to happen.

  Remember to carefully wipe the blade of your knife clean after cutting anything with it.

  Sharpening the Knife

  There are good sharpening stones available at most cutlery stores. Follow the directions that come with yours.

  Putting the Knife Away

  The problem with pocketknives is that it’s possible to cut your finger while folding the blade into its “closed” position. To avoid this problem, make sure that all of your fingers are safely on the sides of the body of the pocketknife before folding the blade in.

  Every so often, put a little oil (WD-40 works) on your blade and in the body of the knife to keep it working smoothly.

  Swiss Army knives were invented in 1891 by a Swiss knife-maker named Karl Elsener. During World War II, U.S. soldiers in Europe loved his knife called the Offiziermesser (Officer’s knife). Because Offiziermesser was a little hard to pronounce, the GIs just called it the Swiss Army knife, and the name stuck. Nowadays, the biggest Swiss Army knife is the “SwissChamp” model, which has 33 features, including a small spatula and a ballpoint pen.

  Silly Putty

  Silly Putty was invented during World War II (1939–45). The United States was in the greatest war the world has ever seen, and supplies were tight everywhere. Gas, meat, rubber, and metal all had to be rationed.

  At that time, most of America’s rubber came from rubber trees in Asia. Since this was not a good source anymore, the call went out for a new synthetic kind of rubber. An engineer named James Wright took on this challenge. He managed to invent a “fake” rubber that was 25 percent more bouncy than real rubber. It could stretch further, and it did not fall apart over time, it could take cold or extreme heat, and it could even lift the ink off a newspaper! It was amazing!

  It was useless. Despite all its magical powers, this new rubber had no practical purpose. If it couldn’t be used for a tire, the U.S. Army had no use for it. After the war, there was a large supply of this rubber that nobody really wanted.

  Wright’s invention was called “nutty putty,” and it was mailed out to many people to see if they could find a use for the product. A toy store manager named Paul Hodgson saw some nutty putty at a party. (A nutty putty party! Whoo-hoo!) In 1949, Hodgson bought a big chunk of nutty putty, and stuck little pieces of it into colored plastic eggs. These “Silly Putty” eggs sold like hot cakes! They sold better than hot cakes! History was made!

  As for Hodgson, he became a millionaire.

  Cool Trick: Shape your Silly Putty into a ball and then put the ball in the freezer for about an hour. Pull it out while it’s cold and bounce it. You should notice a difference!

  Slinky

  Like Silly Putty, the Slinky was invented during World War II. It was 1943 and the U.S. Navy needed help. The instruments that help a ship navigate are very delicate, and the rolling motion of the ocean can mess them up. A man named Richard James was working on a spring to help fix this problem. Richard had many springs set up on different shelves in his laboratory. One day, he accidentally knocked one of the springs off of its shelf and watched in amazement as the spring “crawled” from the shelf, to another shelf, to some books, to his desk, and to the floor!

  Richard showed his discovery to his wife, Betty, and she knew immediately that it could be a great toy. She spent two days coming up with the right name for the toy: the Slinky!

  The couple began production of Slinkys, and in 1946 they brought 400 Slinkys to a toy store. Would the strange springs made with 80 feet of wire sell? Within 90 minutes, all the Slinkys were gone. Luckily, Betty and Richard made more, and the toy is still around today. Does it have batteries? No. Do you plug it in? No. Does it have a video game that comes with it? No! And that is why I love the Slinky.

  The Slinky is the Official State Toy of Pennsylvania. Whoo-hoo!

  Super Ball

  The Super Ball has been bouncing out of backyards and into the street since 1965. A chemist came up with the idea of squishing a rubbery substance under thousands of pounds of pressure to make it “super” bouncy, and the Wham-O! company helped perfect the recipe and get the ball into the hands of kids. The ball bounces back with 92 percent of its original force, so get out of its way unless you want a black eye! Today, everyone knows how much fun it is to pick up a bat and smash a homerun for hundreds of feet. It makes you feel like Super Boy!

  (Okay, okay, Superman. Are you happy now?)

  *If you like football, you have to like the Super Ball. Back in the days before the Super Bowl, professional football’s biggest game was called the “World Championship Game.” The owner of the Kansas City Chiefs didn’t like this name much. He was watching his daughter play with a Super Ball and he got an idea: the Super Bowl!

  *It won’t quite be a Super Ball, but if you take one rubber band and wrap another one around it, and then wrap another one...and do this a thousand times, you’ll have a pretty good rubber band ball.

  Indoor Games!

  Games are fun, but you shouldn’t get too hung up on winning or losing. Winning is not the most important thing in life, it just seems like it is sometimes. What woul
d life be like if you won every game you played? You wouldn’t even bother playing any games at all because there would be no point to it.

  Learning how to win and lose teaches us how to be good sports. A good sport knows that the most important part of any game is this question: “Am I having fun?” If the answer to that question is “No,” you may want to re-think whether you should be playing at all.

  If you are having fun, it does not matter whether you lose a game or not. If you are having fun, it is impossible to be a sore loser because you enjoyed yourself! If you do lose a game, congratulate the winner. If you win, compliment the other player and don’t rub it in. I guess the key is to not be a big baby.

  He Really Was a Big Baby! Thomas Everitt was born in England in 1779. By the time he was 9 months old, he weighed over 100 pounds, bigger than kids 8 times his age. He was described as “lively and well-tempered.” You’d have a smile on your face too if you knew that you could beat up all the bullies (and their big brothers) in your neighborhood.

  The following games may be ones you are not familiar with; that doesn’t mean that the good old games aren’t any good! Darts, poker, chess, or dodgeball are all great, but you know how to play those. Give these other games a shot! (They are arranged roughly in order of how complicated their setup is, from simple to complex.)