The Big Book of Gross Stuff

by Bart King

  Attach the shrunken head to a keychain. Sell it to American tourists.

  Rumpology!

  Humans have come up with a wide variety of ways to tell the future. And one of the strangest of these is rumpology, or the “art” of looking at (or feeling!) a person’s butt and then reading his or her fate from it.

  For the record, I am not making any of this up.

  What can a butt tell us? A lot of things, I guess, but none of them very good! I’d say that if you can predict someone’s future from looking at his or her butt, their future must be pretty bleak.

  The most famous rumpologist is Sylvester Stallone’s mother, Jacqueline. She encourages people to take a photo of their butt and send it in with $125 to get a butt reading. How hard could it be? As she says, your butt print “will reveal your whole being.”

  You know, now that I think about it, I am sort of curious to know what my butt has to say about me. Would it talk trash? Maybe my butt holds the secrets of the universe? (Now I have to see if there’s a good rumpologist in my area...)

  Toilets!

  Toilets make life wonderful!

  After all, think about what you would have done today without a toilet. My guess is that you’d be having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

  But inventing a toilet that flushes turned out to be a pretty hard thing to do. The first flushing toilet dates back to ancient Greece. But it was far too elaborate and expensive to make, so only royal bottoms got to sit on it. It would be thousands of years before Sir John Harrington (1561–1612), a member of Queen Elizabeth’s royal court, invented the first flushing and refilling toilet with moving parts. And even it had the same problem that all toilets had: STINK. You see, sewer gas would float up the pipes and make the entire bathroom stink like . . . a sewer!

  Stopping sewer gas is one of the great achievements of mankind! If you look under your toilet today, you’ll see that the drainage pipe bends away in an S-shaped curve. There is always some water in the bottom of the curve, and that’s what stops sewer smells from stinking up the room you’re in. This great idea came about thanks to Sir Thomas Crapper (1836–1910) and other Victorian Age plumbers.

  Thanks, Crapper!

  Potty Mouths

  Over the course of time, the French have not gotten on very well with the English. So the French called bathrooms lieux à langlaise: “English places.”

  That’s mean!

  The French language has made nicer contributions to the world, though. For example, by the 1800s, the French word toilette (which literally means “cloth”) had come to mean a room or place where washing and dressing takes place. Eventually, “toilet” was used to refer only to the convenient indoor plumbing device you pee and poop into. If you go to Japan, odds are they’ll call it a toiretto. (Really!)

  Back in the good old days, Europeans spent the night filling up bedpans and thunder mugs. In the morning, they’d often empty these poop and pee containers right out the window. But since dumping bodily liquids on someone’s head is pretty uncool, the French got in the habit of shouting “Guardez l’eau!” (“Look out for this water!”) before flinging fluids. This was eventually shortened to simply crying “L’eau!”

  And that’s how one of the words for bathroom came about: loo.[12] (It’s also why streets in the old days really reeked.)

  Today, nobody—I mean nobody—can beat the Japanese for high-tech toilets. Japanese scientists have made the toilet a household throne with a wide array of interesting accessories and features, including heated seats, interior lighting, and music consoles. There is also a feature that lets the toilet know whether or not you want a tiny electrical charge to be sent through your buttocks to check on your body fat ratio. One brand of Japanese toilet even remembers exactly what temperature you want the seat to be set at. It also has a retractable spray nozzle that will shoot a comfortable and cleansing jet of water at your, uh, well, you know. And the latest robo-toilets can tell the gender of users and then automatically lift or lower the toilet seat accordingly.

  Boy (outraged): Hey, why does the toilet automatically lower its lid when I come in the bathroom?

  Girl (laughing): Someone must have programmed it to think you’re a girl!

  I’m Going to Go Watch the Toilet

  The Fish ’n’ Flush allows you to replace your regular toilet tank with a new one that has an aquarium around it. So when you walk into the bathroom, you see an aquarium behind the toilet seat! A marine biologist helped design it so that the fish aren’t affected when the toilet is flushed.

  This is amazing, because before World War II, almost all Japanese squatted over pits to relieve themselves! But rebuilding the country after war allowed Japan to modernize the whole country incredibly fast. That meant all of the Japanese who were used to hunkering down over a hole had to get used to sitting on a toilet. And while it might not seem like it to you, this change was a BIG deal. Writer Yoko Mure shared that the new style seemed the same as “sitting on a chair. I had a terror that if I got used to it, I might excrete whenever I was sitting on a chair anywhere, even at a lesson or at mealtimes.”

  Other countries have faced similar problems when making the change to modern plumbing. The Southeast Asian country of Malaysia has started replacing cesspits (where poopers squat over a hole in the ground) with flushing toilets. But lots of Malaysians still squat—while standing on the toilet seat!

  Fancy Meeting You Here!

  Many public bathrooms in China are “open-style,” so when a squatting visitor looks up, he or she might be face-to-face with another person squatting over another pit.

  To Wipe or Not to Wipe: That Is the Question

  In addition to pee and poo, there’s one other thing that constantly gets flushed. Know what it is? That’s right, toilet paper. But did you know there are billions of people who don’t use toilet paper at all? That’s because when it comes to “getting the dew off the lily,” you can go dry (with TP) or wet (with H2O).

  I’m betting that you’re a wiper, not a washer, so I should probably explain the idea of a bidet (bih-DAY). First invented in the late Middle Ages, this bathroom fixture is usually placed next to the toilet. The idea is that after you poop, a geyser of warm water is better at cleaning your butt than a wad of dry paper.

  Here’s how it works. After pooping, the person straddles the bidet, which often looks like a small porcelain bowl. The user then either sits on the bidet or squats over it, depending on whether the bidet has jets of water shooting sideways across its bowl or if it has a little fountain that burbles up. A bidet also usually has a knob to adjust water temperature and a lever to adjust water pressure. Then, after washing the dew off his or her lily, the user dries off with some toilet paper. Ta-dah!

  Take That, Super-Villain!

  An American company printed Adolf Hitler’s face on toilet paper during World War II.

  If this sounds weird to you, think of it this way: If your whole body were covered in poop, how would you want to clean off?

  a. By wiping your body off with dry paper.

  b. By washing with clean water.

  See what I mean? Writer Dave Praeger thinks the reason bidets haven’t caught on everywhere is because they sound too . . . French. He thinks they’d be much more popular if they were called “buttsinks.” But bidets are common in Europe and Japan.

  Wiping Rules to Live By

  After a perfect poop, you don’t need to wipe at all—but do it anyway, just to be sure!

  After a normal poop, you may have to wipe two to five times.

  If you have to wipe more than six to ten times, you pretty much need to take a shower to take care of business. (Or wash off in the buttsink!)

  Ultra-soft, quilted toilet paper can’t be made from recycled paper. So consider using regular ply!

  There’s no question that people who live in “wiping” cultures end up with dirty underwear. Can you say “bacon strips”? One scientist marveled that wipers complain about a soup stain on a t
ablecloth while “sitting in their fecally stained pants.” That’s nasty! And that’s also why the word “dingleberry” is used to describe the dried poop attached to the hair around the anus. (A cranberry that grows in the southeastern United States is also called a dingleberry. Just to be safe, don’t eat any!)

  Mmmm, bacon strips!

  Which method has been around longer—washing or wiping—is hard to say. Toilet paper on a roll wasn’t available until the 1880s. And since it cost the modern equivalent of over $10 per roll, it wasn’t very popular! So what were people wiping with before that? Well, there were the usual suspects, like moss, grass, straw, and leaves. In the Middle East, people might wipe with small stones, followed by a water clean-up. The ancient Romans used a short stick with a sponge attached to the end of it. The sponge was soaked in saltwater (or rose water!) and then scrubbed around. This excellent method degraded in the Middle Ages to “gompf” sticks, which were designed to scrape. (But even a gompf stick was probably better than the corncobs used by American settlers.)

  The Vikings wiped with handfuls of wool, which sounds perfectly reasonable, and on some South Pacific islands, coconut shells served their duty. During the Renaissance, French nobles picked up style points by using fancy lace napkins. And believe it or not, some cold weather cultures in North America and Siberia wiped with snow.

  Whether washing or wiping, people generally use their left hand to get the dew off the lily. That’s one reason why the left hand has picked up sort of a bad reputation! (In Italian, the word sinistra means both “left” and “sinister”!) And that’s why it’s VERY impolite in many cultures to eat or offer to shake with the left hand.

  I always assumed that everyone wiped in the same direction: back to front. Nope! Lots of guys and most women wipe from front to back. But as far as I know, nobody wipes right to left, so that’s a relief.

  Also, I thought that all wipers did a “visual” on their paper to know when they’re done. I’ve since learned that many people just wipe until they think they’re clean. That’s because they’re too scared to look at their own toilet paper.

  Now that’s pretty squeamish!

  This Book Stinks!

  When Roman poet Gaius Catullus (about 84 BCE–54 CE) read something he didn’t like, he called it cacata charta—“poop paper.”

  Humanure

  There are lots of organic and chemical fertilizers that people add to the soil to make it better for farming. And poop (or “manure”) is one of the best fertilizers around! It’s been used ever since the first human looked at a Brussels sprout and said, “I wonder if I could grow one of these. And where IS Brussels, anyway?”

  Using farm-animal poop for manure makes sense, but if poop is good for crops, why not use human poop as well? After all, your poop is full of potassium, nitrogen, and phosphorus. (Your pee has the same stuff at about 80 percent of poop’s strength.) And in the right amounts, these chemicals are great for fertilizer. So if a human makes manure, can you guess what we call it? Humanure! In Sweden, they have developed special toilets to treat humanure. These toilets separate the poop from the pee. (“Number 1, say goodbye to Number 2!”) Treating the pee separately not only makes better manure, but it also produces methane (surprise!), which can be used as an energy source.

  When human poop is processed properly, it looks like rich, brown-black dirt. It doesn’t stink and it’s not full of scary bacteria. In fact, if your family already composts, it looks just like what your leaves, food scraps, and lawn clippings turn into. And the heat that builds up in a compost pile will eventually kill any harmful bacteria that are hanging around.

  And don’t worry about the worms. A New Zealand man named Coll Bell invented a composting toilet that worked great. However, a government official wanted to know if the worms in the compost would be overworked or “traumatized” by having to dig in the poop. Mr. Bell then had to get a worm expert (known as a “vermiculturist”) to assure the official that composting worms are “happy” worms!

  So why aren’t composting toilets being used all over the world? Because to use the ones that separate pee from poo, men have to pee sitting down. And in many countries (especially in North and South America), this is not seen as very manly. In fact, the German slang word sitzpinkler means both “man who sits to pee” and “wimp”! So if you have ever wondered if men who are worried about looking macho are slowing civilization down, you’re on to something.

  But wait, the simplest toilet might be the best one. A man named Joseph Jenkins (author of The Humanure Handbook) came up with this system. First, he builds a simple cabinet that’s about as tall as a toilet seat. The cabinet has a big hole in the top, into which slides a five-gallon bucket. A regular toilet seat covers the hole when the bucket isn’t in use. Next to the cabinet is a second bucket full of sawdust, with a scoop in it.

  When a person needs to poop, he scoops some sawdust into the bucket in the cabinet. Then he sits and poops (and probably pees) on the sawdust. Finally, he scoops some sawdust over the poop and pee. That’s it! The bucket will not smell. After about a week, the bucket is lifted out and emptied onto a compost heap, where it’s covered with hay or straw. That compost pile will sit for a couple of years, and the poop really WILL be compost by the end of that time.

  Then it can be used as manure in gardening! (Apparently, Jenkins grows prize-winning tomatoes with his homegrown compost.)

  The Horror!

  Most cultures have branded the bathroom as a place to be avoided. But Japan is one of the few places where it’s also been associated with monsters! Many Japanese children are led to believe that a hairy hand might emerge from the toilet and grab them! Add to this the fact that, historically, bathrooms in Japan were hidden away in a dark part of the house, and you have a recipe for toilet terror!

  World Toilet Day Rocks!

  If all this potty talk has made you think we’re living in the Golden Age of Toilets, that’s only partly true. I mean, sure, you’re lucky. If you needed to go to the bathroom right now, you probably could. High-five! (Uh, you washed your hands, right?)

  But imagine if you were one of the 40 percent of the people in the world who don’t have access to a toilet, outhouse, or even an empty coffee can. Billions of folks have to poop and/or pee in fields, forests, bushes, rivers, or open spaces. The result is what we call “open sewage,” and it isn’t just gross, it’s bad for everyone’s health. If you step on a pile of human poop, here’s what can be found in a small portion of what’s stuck to your sole:

  10 million viruses

  1 million bacteria

  100 worm eggs

  1,000 parasites

  1 piece of bubblegum (Hey! That was already there!)

  Yeesh! Open sewage is a particular problem in many poor, overpopulated countries. To look into the world’s “toilet situation,” a group of experts discovered some of the toughest places in the world to track down a decent bathroom. The African country of Eritrea was judged the worst place to be if you need to go. About 85 percent of Eritreans are forced to relieve themselves in the open because there are almost no toilets to be found.

  But for school kids, the worst place to be if you need to go might be the country of Yemen. There, children often find themselves in schools without any restrooms. To cope, Yemeni students develop bladders of steel and hold it all day long. That would make it a little hard to concentrate on classwork! (The Yemeni boys usually end up peeing on their schools’ walls. Really!)

  The point is that the toilet (and the plumbing it’s hooked up to) could be the greatest invention of all time. Don’t believe me? Getting poop and its related germs out of your surroundings adds an average of twenty years to your lifespan! (Want to know how many hours a television adds to your life? 2)

  More than two million people die each year because of health problems related to open sewage. That’s why a world health organization came up with the following poem to publicize the dangers of poop germs getting into drinking water:

&n
bsp; Jack and Jill went up the hill

  To fetch a pail of water

  After a drink of the water

  Jack died of cholera

  And Jill died of amoebic dysentery.

  Harsh! But to keep things positive, the World Toilet Organization promotes November 19 as World Toilet Day. I know, it sounds funny! And it’s okay with the WTO people to joke about this stuff; trust me, they expect nothing less. And after the joking, they hope people realize that Jawaharlal Nehru was right when he said, “A country in which every citizen has access to a clean toilet has reached the pinnacle of progress.”

  * * *

  [12] Medieval monks called the loo the “necessary house.” Other names rooted in history include water closet, privy, lavatory, and House of Easement.