by Bart King
Putting Your Best Food Forward
You are a champion barfer!
This is because you eat lots of different types of foods and you are terrible at spotting the unfriendly toxins or bacteria that might be in them. (Unlike, say, your dog, you can’t just sniff your food and notice that something is wrong.)
This means that humans barf WAY more than almost any other species of animal. Although this makes me proud, the problem is that our vomit is full of hydrochloric acid. That’s strong stuff; it can dissolve a stainless steel spoon the way your mouth dissolves a sugar cube! So if you’re constantly barfing, your strong stomach acid will damage your throat, teeth, and mouth. (And that’s why it’s so good to brush your teeth after puking.)
To Barf or Not to Barf . . . That Is the Question!
All that barfing means the human body has had to come up with a way to protect itself. And here it is: before you blow chunks, you’ll start to salivate like crazy. (Many of us just go to the bathroom and start spitting into the toilet when this happens.) The saliva is being produced to protect your mouth and throat from all the acid that will soon be arriving! Yep, saliva is like a buffer between your skin and stomach acid. Who knew?! My whole life I’ve wondered why this happens. (Man, this book rules!)
It’s Official
Barfing and then having puke squirt out your nose is officially the Worst Feeling in the World.
But even though things are looking pretty bad, it’s still possible to head this off at the pass. Use your mind to soothe your stomach! Take deep breaths, and try to calm down by thinking of pleasant things like rainbows, flowers, or meat loaf. (Urp . . . okay, never mind the meat loaf.)
The challenge will be to think of non-gross things even as you’re staring into a toilet bowl. Consider this a test of your powers of concentration! Close your eyes, breathe through your mouth, and let that cool tile floor relax your mind and body. Ahh. Do you feel better?
While food comes out of your stomach when you barf, your brain is the organ that puts out the red alert. That’s why riding in a car on a winding road can make you ill: your body is feeling one thing (being thrown from side to side) but seeing another (the unchanging interior of the car). This is what some people call “motion sickness.” And in a desperation move, the brain will decide to jettison all cargo!
Barf-Aid
To avoid barfing from motion sickness, try pushing on your wrist an inch or two down from your palm. (There are wristbands that do this for you.) This somehow “short-circuits” the barfing impulse. Hey, don’t look at me. I didn’t invent this system, I just report on it!
If you are feeling sick in a car or on a boat, try to look at something far away that is not moving, like the horizon or the planet Jupiter. This helps calm your mind. But if you’re on a roller coaster, you’re pretty much out of luck. You’ll be whipping around too fast to keep your eyes on much of anything! And once you start drooling and breaking out in a cold sweat, you know what’s going to happen: everything must go!
“Prepare to launch!”
Ways to Say It
Silly names or phrases can be a spoonful of sugar that makes the distasteful idea of barfing go down easier. Take being “bitten by Count Barf-ula,” for instance. It’s so stupid, it’s wonderful! Other notable categories include the following:
“Ch-”: For some reason, words that start with “ch-” are employed a lot when talking about vomit. So people are constantly chucking chum, Cheerios, chow, chunks, and so forth.
Democracy in Action: Bring it up for a vote.
Throwing: The popularity of “throwing up” has led to some creative phrases, such as tossing your cookies, tossing your tacos, pitching a slider, and upchucking.
Vowels Are Liquidy! Aaaaaa, Eeeeee, Iiiiii, Oooooo, Uuuuuu—and sometimes “Whhhyyy?”
Fun Combinations: Bending and sending, thunder-chunder, chowder blow, gravy gargling.
“There She Blows!”: The word “blow” can be used by itself or with any colorful noun. Thus, a person can blow biscuits, soup, foam, groceries, cutlets, doughnuts, etc.
Other Favorites:
Gut-dumping, hork and beans, involuntary personal protein spill, Hyuuuundai!, buckling your stomach into the ejector seat, riding the Regurgitron, getting a round-trip meal ticket, spud spewing, yakking.
Although barfing is one of the most unpleasant things a body can do, people throughout history have tried to get some entertainment value out of it. For example, an old Viking adventure story tells of a group of travelers arriving at the home of a man named Armod Beard. Armod feeds the travelers huge amounts of a yogurt called skyr, and then lots of strong ale. Bad idea. The story unhurls—er, unfurls—this way:
“Egil heaves up so much vomit that it pours into Armod’s face, in his eyes, up his nostrils, and into his mouth. It runs down his chest. When Armod manages to get his breath again, he then begins heaving all over. Then Egil returns to his seat and asks for more ale.”
The moral of this story can be expressed as an equation: Viking + Yogurt + Ale = Trouble.
Ooh, “blowing skyr” could be the new slang! And I bet that right before Egil blew skyr, he probably had those weird sensations that your body gives you to warn of an upcoming upchucking. It turns out that there is a word for this: vomiturient.
keck: To make a sound as though one is going to barf.
And vomit is still being used for entertainment purposes today. Heck, I bet that if your TV could barf, it would! The 2008 program called Hurl would probably bring on this response. It marked the first time in the history of television that an entire show was devoted to barf. First, the contestants stuffed themselves with food. Then they were marched onto nausea-inducing carnival rides like Loop-the-Lower Intestine and Crack the Colon. How do you win? Don’t hurl. This was perhaps as challenging for viewers as it was for contestants. As the Washington Post reported, Hurl “oozes under the lowest bar ever set by reality television.”
The Magic Touch
By sticking a finger or other small item (like a feather) down their throat, a person can gag and vomit. There is some history here: in ancient Rome, the rich sometimes had huge feasts with a wide variety of food. If a Roman wanted to continue eating but was too full, he visited the vomitorium. This was an area to barf, and 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.”
Speaking of barf and technology, a company named Invocon has been developing a “vomit beam” for the U.S. Navy. It shoots an invisible ray that can travel through walls and give everyone it hits dizziness and “extreme motion sickness.”
This is handy, because instead of having to shoot bad people, you just aim an invisible beam at them. Then they’ll fall over and puke! (You can get similar effects by cranking the volume on American Idol.)
Possible silly names for the weapon include:
BARF: Broad Application Radio Frequency
PUKE: Personnel Usage Kinetic Energy
RALPH: Radiation Application of Long-Phase High-Energy
SPEW: Systemic Personnel Energy Weapon
Science!
Have you ever wondered why gravity doesn’t keep our food down for us? I have, so I asked a doctor about it. Her response: “It’s because your stomach is surrounded by a strong muscle called the diaphragm. And when that muscle heaves, contracts, and clenches, it will squish your stomach. At the same time, your food tube will relax. And then you’re going to barf like there’s no tomorrow.” (But I don’t want to barf like there’s no tomorrow!)
So let’s say you threw up and now you have the guts to look at the actual puke itself. Look, there’s spaghetti! And broccoli? You don’t even eat broccoli! In addition to the undigested and partially digested food, there will also be stomach acid and a clear, gooey stomach mucus. (The acid breaks down food, and the mucus protects your stomach from the acid.) There may be a lot more mucus in your stomach than usual when you puk
e. That’s because, just as your body makes more saliva to protect itself, it also makes more mucus!
Nausea Kicks Butt
People who throw up for a long time can sometimes get black eyes. That’s because all that heaving and straining can make the small veins near their eyes burst!
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.
What makes bile green? It’s sort of weird, but it’s the same thing that makes bruises turn yellow and poop turn brown. It’s a waste substance called bilirubin, which is made when the liver breaks down old red blood cells. Bilirubin is usually disposed of through the pooping process.
“Thar She Blows—Cha-Ching!!”
A family vacationing in Sydney, Australia, was enjoying some time at the beach when they made a weird discovery. A big pile of some sort of “solid fatty substance” had washed up with the surf. It turned out to be whale vomit. And since whale vomit is highly prized by the fragrance industry, the pile turned out to be worth over $200,000!
The scariest barf is called “projectile vomiting.” While regular barfing involves the stomach contracting and forcing up its contents, projectile barfing is when this process happens at light speed. Additionally, a projectile vomiter’s throat closes more than is normally the case, which restricts the flow of the puke. (Sort of like what happens when you put a nozzle on a hose.)
Projectile barfing is the human equivalent of shaking a can of soda. When the tab is pulled, the contents just go flying! And so with projectile vomiting, a person won’t throw up at their feet. They’ll throw up through a window on the other side of the room!
Fake Barf!
There are a lot of companies that make fake barf. But the one with the best reputation is probably Chicago’s Fun Inc. They make phony puke the old-fashioned way.
Actually, I guess the really old-fashioned way would be by actually puking, so never mind that!
Anyway, company president Graham Putnam says that his is “the best vomit on the market.” Fair enough: it is a bubbly, colorful-looking pool of barf. How do they make such excellent vomit? Dunno! But I can tell you that they start with natural latex (which looks like cream) and then add chunks of colored foam.
Gross Tip: When using fake vomit, remember that the key to faking people out is to sprinkle water on the stuff to make it look more realistic!
Gross Flick: Classy moviemakers sometimes need fake barf for their films. As far as I know, the most fake barf ever used in a movie was in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983). It definitely contains the longest vomiting scene in film history. (Good grief, just thinking about it makes me light-headed!)
Regurgitated Animal Knowledge
Perhaps you know that many species of birds barf up food for their young. But birds aren’t the only animals to do this! For example, if an adult wolf has good hunting, it will eat an incredible amount of meat and then return back to its pups. When the pups see a bulging adult wolf, they go nuts and start nibbling and poking at the adult’s muzzle. This triggers a barfing reflex.
Wolf expert Dr. Gordon Haber describes the consistency of the barf as “sort of reminding me of the warm, chunky tuna sauce I used to look forward to on toast as a kid.” According to the doctor, an adult wolf may barf a number of piles, and each of them can be over ten pounds!
Learning Lessons from a Cucumber
The sea cucumber has much to teach us foolish humans about barfing. If threatened by a predator, one type of sea cucumber barfs its guts out. Literally! Of course, it’s hard to know if it’s actually barf or poop, because this sea cucumber’s mouth and anus are the same hole! Anyway, this is so disgusting that the cucumber’s would-be predator flees the scene. And “sea cuke puke” is so sticky and tough that people from some islands squeeze it onto their feet like a pair of shoes to protect their feet while they walk in the water!
So why is this helpful to us? Well, the sea cucumber picks an appropriate time and place to barf. If only humans could be so sensible! There’s something tragic about people who know they’re going to throw up, and then they make the worst possible decision about WHERE this horrible event will take place. For example, my sister once threw up in a floor vent. This was the worst possible place to do the deed! It was hard to clean out, and the smell of barf permeated the house. A slightly better choice would have been a sink: still messy, but at least it’s close to the toilet . . . which, of course, is always the best choice of all (unless it’s clogged!).
Here’s another example. Pretend you had to throw up on your choice of kitchen appliances. The worst choice would probably be the waffle iron (especially if it were on!). Oh, the waffles! A blender would probably be the best place to blow. If your chowder is too chunky, you can just push the puree button!
Anyway, study these spew spot comparisons, and make the sea cucumber proud.
SpotWorst ChoiceBetter ChoiceBest Choice
School Spewing in trombone during band class Barfing on school bully in science class Upchucking on kid you don’t like in restroom
Car Ashtray Closed window, moving car Open window, stopped car
Kitchen Colander Salad bowl Dog dish
Floor Covering Carpet Throw rug Throw-up rug
Laundry Wicker wastebasket Dirty clothes hamper Garbage can
Sleeping In your bed Your brother’s sock drawer Your sister’s toy box
Flying Outer space (dry-cleaning bills for spacesuits are brutal!) Skydiving Airplane restroom
Hat Sombrero Waterproof beret Construction worker’s hard hat
Sewers!
You’re a pooping and peeing machine. On average, you produce 80 pounds of poop and 130 gallons of pee each year. And it takes 4,000 gallons of toilet water to flush it all away. And since billions of other people are all doing the same thing, that waste really starts to add up!
Back in prehistory, pooping and peeing was no big deal. There weren’t that many people around! So the hunter-gatherers and nomads could just poop and keep walking.
But as soon as people started building small settlements, they had a problem. They didn’t want to poop right by their homes! So before a person pooped, he put one foot in front of the other and took a walk away from the village. As one ancient document suggested, “Shoot an arrow from your home. Do not poop any closer to it than where the arrow lands.” (That’s almost a direct quote.)
Eventually, people started hanging out in larger and larger groups. Pretty soon, we had cities! This posed a problem. If you lived in a large city, you couldn’t just walk until you got to the wilderness. You’d have to walk all day! So the ancient Greeks and Romans used plumbing and running water to remove poop. Since individual flush toilets weren’t available, people got together in public bathrooms called forica, where they could sit on marble seats in rows and socialize.
For societies without plumbing, “cesspits” were a solution. The idea was to dig a hole. Now put all your pee and poop into it! But the pee and poop liquids would seep into the soil. This was bad if the people drew drinking water from nearby! That’s how deadly diseases like cholera (which hides in human poop) get spread.
But cesspits could be lined with stone so that their sewage stayed put. And if a society were really organized, every so often, someone would come in to clean out (or “muck”) the cesspit. But who was going to do that dirty work? In France, a cesspit cleaner was called the Maître Fifi. He’d show up with his crew in the dead of night with carts, shovels, hoists, pulleys, and, most importantly, big buckets. And you didn’t mess with the Maître Fifi. If you made fun of his job title or didn’t pay your bill on time, he had a weapon to use on you: your own poop! (He might use it to smear “Pay your bills” on the walls of your house, for instance.)
In India, a different method was used. For thousands of years, India’s social system had five basi
c levels. At the top were the Brahmins, and at the bottom were the Dalits, also known as the Untouchables. Among other nasty jobs, the Dalits were in charge of burning dead bodies and handling human poop. To protest this unfairness, Mohandas Gandhi (who was a Brahmin) made a point of cleaning his own cesspit. This came as a great shock to his fellow Indians!
As for Americans, they originally had to take care of their own poop with a private sewer or outhouse. But city-dwellers got a breakthrough in the 1870s. That’s when cities began putting in big sewage systems for everyone to share. That was good news!
Security Alert!
Sewer lines are big enough to allow people (and killer robots!) to move through them. So the sewers that pass by high-security zones like Buckingham Palace, the White House, and my house have sensors in them. If the sensors are triggered, police are alerted that an assassin or ice cream salesperson might be sneaking through them.
