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by KEN JENNINGS
Dont cross your eyes or theyll stay like that! Feed a cold, starve a fever! Dont touch your Halloween candy until we get it checked out! Never run with scissors Dont look in the microwave while its running!
s any of it true? If so, how true? Ken Jennings wants to find out if mother and father always know best. Yes, all those years you were told not to sit too close to the television (youll hurt your eyes!) or swallow your gum (it stays in your stomach for seven years!) or crack your knuckles (arthritis!) are called into question by our countrys leading trivia guru. Jennings separates myth from fact to debunk a wide variety of parental edicts: no swimming after meals, sit up straight, dont talk to strangers, and so on. Armed with medical case histories, scientific findings, and even the occasional experiment on himself (or his kids), Jennings exposes countless examples of parental wisdom run amok. Whether youre a parent who wants to know what you can stop worrying about or a kid (of any age) looking to say, I told you so, this is the antihelicopter parenting book youve been waiting for.
But its easy to demonstrate with NEISS that scissors arent especially dangerous, certainly not in keeping with their gangsta reputation. Seventy-two percent of those 4,556 injuries were to fingers, it turns out, which means that cutting with scissors is a vastly bigger problem than running with them. Looking at scissors injuries to older kids since 1997, I was able to find doctors notes on six patients who suffered buttock lacerations when they accidentally sat on a pair of scissors, compared to only four who were hurt running. But is sitting on scissors a slang term for wild, devil-may-care behavior? It is not! If youve ever used the safety scissors that kids are around most often, you know that they have a hard time getting through construction paper, much less human flesh. It might be a good idea to remind kids that they should be more careful around Moms sewing scissors than they are with those flimsy, rounded things that get passed out at day care. But overall, NEISS reveals that kids are downright safe around scissors compared to death traps like batteries (4,972 injuries last year), handrails and banisters (9,434), benches (11,563), and coins (28,674). Unless you shiver with fear at the sight of a banister, you dont need to teach kids excessive paranoia regarding scissors either. Why is a bench or handrail dangerous? Because you could trip and hurt yourself on it, just as you could with scissors or a pencil or a toy. Its the running around like a crazy person that leads to the accidents, not the scissors so much.
MOSTLY TRuE.
drome, theyre made of swallowed hair. And sometimes, very rarely, theyre made of chewing gum. Dr. Milovs team found three cases of young children whose means of discarding their gum (swallowing) was well known to the families and was a source of levity. Well, nobody was laughing when the gum swallowing led to chronic constipation and, finally, surgery when laxatives proved powerless. If you want your kids to quit swallowing their gum, heres the money quote: This clean-out regimen produced no results after 4 days. On the 5th day, the child was brought in for manual disimpaction under conscious sedation and rectal suction biopsy. On removal of the leading edge of the fecoma, a taffy-like trail of fecal material remained in the rectum. This mass was eventually manually withdrawn and was primarily made up of chewing gum. Wow. I hope these parents kept the rectal suction biopsy video on hand to show future prom dates. But keep in mind: this was a kid who swallowed five to seven pieces of gum per day. Other cases only got serious when stuff like coins got swallowed and trapped in the Wrigleys-brand butt plug. So dont worrythe occasional accidentally swallowed piece of gum isnt going to do any harm. Youd have to be the Hunter S. Thompson of gum swallowing to get into medical trouble. But prepare to be embarrassed if youre caught! Dr. Milov writes that the rainbow of fused, multicolored gum fragments in the removed fecoma is easily recognized by physician and family as old gum. Maybe Im just weird, but that actually sounds sort of beautifulother than the part where it, you know, gets pulled out of someones butt.
FALSE.
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Ken Jennings
are 100 percent genetic. But myopia might be a cause, not a result, of sitting too close to the TV. A child who prefers to be mere inches away from SpongeBob might need an eye exam to see if shes nearsighted. Of course, too much TV can have other, non-ophthalmological side effects, like obesity, imitative behavior, and unusually expert familiarity with the iCarly supporting cast. But those mostly depend on your distance from reality, not from the TV screen.
FALSE.
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Copyright 2012 by Ken Jennings This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author, based on scientific consensus at the time of publication and commonsense personal observations. The author and publisher disclaim responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk incurred as a consequence of the use and application of the contents of this book. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Scribner Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. First Scribner hardcover edition December 2012 SCRIBNER and design are registered trademarks of The Gale Group, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, Inc., the publisher of this work. For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com. The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. Designed by Carla Jayne Jones Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012027688 ISBN 978-1-4516-5625-1 ISBN 978-1-4516-5627-5 (ebook)