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My name is Stephen. I am 11 and I live in Missouri. My brother Sean is 15. My whole life Sean has told me stuff like it's a fact. "Everybody knows that." "It's science." "Look it up." So this summer I DID look it up. I used the library (the kids' section AND the grown-up section), our encyclopedia CD-ROM, and my mom, who knows almost everything.
Every claim gets a verdict. If Sean was right it gets the gold TRUE stamp. If he was wrong it gets the red BALONEY stamp. I was fair. Mom checked my work.
PS. There's a grown-up who checks things too, at The Legend Lab. He's a chemistry student in North Carolina and he checks the e-mails his aunt sends him. He is like me but older, and with an aunt instead of a brother.
#1 SWALLOWED GUM
Sean said: If you swallow your gum it stays in your stomach for seven years.
What I found: Your body can't digest the rubbery part of gum. BUT it doesn't stay in there. It just goes through you along with everything else and comes out in a few days. The doctor book at the library said so and so did Mom. She also said don't swallow a whole pack at once, which I wasn't going to.
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#2 WATERMELON SEEDS
Sean said: If you swallow a watermelon seed, a watermelon will grow in your stomach.
What I found: Seeds need dirt and sunlight to grow. Your stomach is dark and it's full of acid that breaks food down. A seed just goes through, like the gum. I was 99% sure about this one, so I swallowed three seeds on purpose at the Fourth of July picnic. It has been almost three months. No watermelon.
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#3 THE ONE-HOUR RULE
Sean said: You have to wait a whole hour after you eat before you go swimming, or you'll get a cramp and drown.
What I found: If you swim really hard right after a big lunch you might get a pain in your side, like when you run. But I looked in three books and asked the lifeguard at the pool, and nobody knew about one single person who drowned from eating a sandwich. The lifeguard said the real rules are don't swim alone and don't run on the deck.
Note: Mom says she is still making us wait 20 minutes, because it's her pool membership.
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#4 CRACKING KNUCKLES
Sean said: If you keep cracking your knuckles they'll get huge and you'll have giant knuckles like an old man.
What I found: The popping sound is a bubble of gas in the slippery stuff inside your joints. It doesn't make your knuckles grow. My Grandpa is 68 and he has cracked his knuckles every day since he was a kid, and I checked, and his knuckles are regular size. He was happy to help with my research. (Mom says it's still annoying, so don't do it at the table.)
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#5 GOLDFISH MEMORY
Sean said: A goldfish can only remember things for three seconds, so every time it swims around the bowl it's like brand new.
What I found: I did an EXPERIMENT on my goldfish, Torpedo. For two weeks I tapped on the lid two times before I fed him. After that, he swam right up to the top every time I tapped, even when I didn't have any food. (I gave him food anyway because I felt bad.) So he remembered the taps for two weeks, which is a lot more than three seconds. The man at the pet store said fish can learn all kinds of things.
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#6 LIGHTNING
Sean said: Lightning never strikes the same place twice.
What I found: The Empire State Building gets hit by lightning lots of times every single year. Tall things get hit over and over. AND there was a park ranger in Virginia named Roy Sullivan who got struck by lightning seven different times, and he lived through all of them. He is in the Guinness book. So it can even hit the same PERSON more than twice.
Safety tip: Don't stand under a tree in a thunderstorm. Go inside.
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#7 BULLS AND RED
Sean said: Bulls go crazy when they see the color red. That's why bullfighters use a red cape.
What I found: Bulls can't even see red the way we do. Cattle can't tell red from green. The bull charges at the cape because the bullfighter is swishing it around. It would charge a blue cape or a yellow cape just the same if it was moving. So don't wear red to a farm, but not because of the bull.
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#8 BABY BIRDS
Sean said: If you touch a baby bird, the mother bird will smell you on it and she won't take care of it anymore.
What I found: Most birds have a really bad sense of smell. The mother won't even notice. If a baby bird with no feathers falls out of its nest, you can put it back in. BUT if it has feathers and it's hopping around on the ground, it's probably learning to fly, and its parents are close by watching it, so you should leave it alone. I learned that from the bird book and from the lady next door, who feeds about a hundred birds.
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#9 BLIND AS A BAT
Sean said: Bats are blind. That's why people say "blind as a bat."
What I found: Bats can see! Lots of kinds of bats also use echolocation. That means they make high squeaks that we can't hear and listen for the echoes bouncing back off bugs, so they can catch them in the dark. And fruit bats have big eyes and see fine. So "blind as a bat" should really mean "can see pretty good."
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#10 CAMEL HUMPS
Sean said: Camels keep water in their humps, like a canteen.
What I found: The hump is mostly FAT. The camel can use it for energy when there isn't any food in the desert. Camels can go a really long time without a drink, and then they drink a whole lot of water at once, but it doesn't go in the hump. The encyclopedia CD-ROM had a video of a camel drinking. It took forever.
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#11 PORCUPINES
Sean said: Porcupines can shoot their quills at you like darts if you get too close.
What I found: They can't shoot them at all. The quills come out really easy when something touches them, and they have tiny hooks on the ends so they stick in. That's why a dog that bothers a porcupine ends up with a nose full of quills. The porcupine didn't shoot them. The dog just shouldn't have sniffed it.
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#12 HONEY
Sean said: Honey never goes bad. You could keep a jar for years and still eat it.
What I found: This is true!!! Honey has tons of sugar in it and hardly any water, so germs can't grow in it. Sometimes it gets hard and grainy, which is called crystallizing, but if you put the jar in a bowl of warm water it gets runny again and it's fine. We have a jar in the cupboard from when we moved into this house and it is still good. (Mom says babies under one year old shouldn't have honey, but that's a different thing and Sean didn't say anything about babies.)
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THE FINAL SCORE
BROTHER: 1 BALONEY: 11
I showed Sean the whole page on the computer. He read all of it. He didn't say anything for a long time. Then he said:
"Whatever. I was testing you, and you passed. You're welcome."
— Sean, 15 |
He was NOT testing me. But he did help me spell "echolocation."
YOUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS >>
Stuff other kids' brothers and sisters told them, and what I found out
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since July 1999
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Last updated Saturday, September 25, 1999
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