Uncle John’s 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader® (82 page)

D
ubious Achiever:
Steve Trendell, an officer with London’s Metropolitan Police force
Claim to Shame:
Spending too much time in the bathroom.
Lots
of bathrooms, actually.

True Story:
Trendell, 30, missed a lot of work because of a bad back. Over an 18-month period between 2004 and 2006, he took 246 days of sick leave and spent another 130 days on “recuperative duty.” He worked only 71 regular days during the entire period, and for a time even lived in a police rest home. Trendell’s excuse: a bad back. But when the police department received a tip that his health troubles weren’t as serious as he claimed, it placed him under surveillance...and discovered he was running a bathroom contracting business during the hours he was supposedly too disabled to work. (He was pretty brazen about it, too, even parking his company van in front of the rest home.)

Outcome:
Trendell was arrested and charged with obtaining sick pay under false pretenses. He resigned from the force, pled guilty to two criminal counts of deception, and received a suspended six-month sentence and 250 hours of community service. (No word on whether he still installs bathrooms.)

Dubious Achievers:
Inmates at the Maguire Correctional Center in Redwood City, California

Claim to Shame:
Trying to stick it to San Mateo County taxpayers by flushing anything and everything down jailhouse toilets

True Story:
In January 2008, the South Bayside System Authority, which provides sewer service to the jail, sued San Mateo County for more than $8 million in compensation for the damage that jail inmates had inflicted on sewer system pumps and other equipment by flushing socks, boxer shorts, shampoo bottles, bath towels, hair-brushes, garbage bags, and other seemingly unflushable items down their toilets as a way of rebelling against the prison. (How does the sewer authority know all that stuff is coming from the correctional facility? The inmates flushed their jailhouse jumpsuits down the toilets too.)

Screenplay-writing rule: 1 page of script equals 1 minute of screen time.

Outcome:
The county settled the lawsuit for $2.3 million. The jail is tightening its inventory control to stop inmates from flushing so much stuff down their toilets. The sewer authority installed new grates to keep the trash away from sensitive equipment and hired two additional staffers to rake the trash off the grates several times a day. “It’s a jail population,” says deputy county counsel Porter Goltz. “What they flush down the toilet is sometimes difficult for us to monitor.”

Dubious Achiever:
Warren Saunders, 60, of Westwood, New Jersey

Claim to Shame:
Taking “TP-ing” to new heights

True Story:
One evening in October 2010, some students at Westwood Middle School were at soccer practice when an airplane passing overhead dropped two small objects on the field, then circled around and dropped a third object on the field before flying away. In a more innocent age, such odd behavior might not have been so frightening, but this was post-9/11 New Jersey. Some of the students called police, who traced the suspicious activity back to Saunders, a pilot who owns his own airplane. Saunders admitted tossing the objects—rolls of toilet paper—out of his plane onto the field. Why did he do it? Westwood Regional High School’s football team was scheduled to play Mahwah High School that weekend in a game that would decide which team advanced to the playoffs. Saunders, a Westwood High fan, wanted to show his spirit by dropping streamers on the field at the start of the game. The toilet paper “attack” at the middle school was a practice run. (He says it was difficult to see in the evening light, and he did not realize there were kids on the field.)

Outcome:
Saunders was facing 18 months in the slammer for one count of fourth-degree acrobatic flying over a populated area, but he got off with a year’s probation and agreed to write a letter of apology to everyone involved. “I take full responsibility for my ill-conceived and, in hindsight, misguided idea of dropping toilet paper from my airplane,” he wrote.

A cockroach can change directions up to 25 times in a second.

Dubious Achiever:
Dwayne “Shorty” Davis, 51, Maryland businessman and owner of Shorty’s Underground Pit Beef Shack

Claim to Shame:
Taking his toilet-themed activism a little too far

True Story:
Davis has a history of protesting against government agencies and officials he doesn’t like. How? By decorating toilets with photographs, illustrations, news clippings, handwritten notes, and other items, and then depositing the fixtures in front of government buildings and other public places. In February 2011, Davis left a toilet on the sidewalk in front of the historic Baltimore County Courthouse in Towson, Maryland. This time, however, his decorations included a cell phone and a radio transmitter...and that made police suspect the toilet might be a bomb. Several streets were closed off while the bomb squad investigated. So what gave Davis away? He actually left photos of himself and a note with his home address inside the toilet. He initially denied involvement, but in a Facebook post made around the time the fixture was discovered, he wrote “Left my Toilet at the Baltimore Courthouse.”

Outcome:
At last report Davis was awaiting trial on two counts relating to the bomb scare. “Jesus had a cross. Martin Luther King had a dream. Malcolm X had a gun. Shorty got a toilet, but we all have our s**t to deal with,” he told a TV reporter.

TWO NAUGHTY GAME SHOW GOOFS

Merideth Vieira:
Though most planets are named after Roman deities, what is the only planet named for a figure in Greek mythology?

Contestant:
Hmmm...Let’s see. Jupiter is Roman, I believe. I can’t even put a finger on Uranus.

—
Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Alex Trebek:
This term for a long-handled gardening tool can also mean an immoral pleasure seeker.

Contestant:
What is a hoe?

—
Jeopardy!
(The answer was “rake.”)

Marilyn Monroe once appeared in a TV commercial selling Union Oil gasoline.

T
HE
ABC
S
OF
P
H

On
page 116
we taught you how to make your own pH-level testers using nothing but cabbage and bald eagle spleens. (Okay, not exactly.) Now here’s the scientific explanation behind pH. (pHinally!)

P
HIRST THINGS FIRST
You’ve probably heard “pH level” referred to hundreds of times, possibly in relation to the water in a swimming pool or a hot tub, or to hair conditioner, laundry detergent, or even skin cream. And, like Uncle John, you probably had no idea what it actually meant. Well, in just a few minutes you will.

The first thing we need to understand about pH is why it’s called “pH”: It stands for “power of hydrogen.” Why? Because pH is a measure of how different substances, when dissolved in water, chemically react with the hydrogen in that water—the “H” in H2O. And because water is so important in relation to life on Earth, the pH level of that water is extremely important, too.

OH!

Water is scientifically known as H2O, signifying that every water molecule is made up of two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom. What most of us
don’t
know is that those H2O molecules aren’t always intact. In any given quantity of water, there’s always a few H2O molecules that have split into two pieces: one atom of hydrogen (H) and a molecule containing one atom of hydrogen bonded with one atom of oxygen (OH). The only thing we need to understand about it right now is this: In pure water the amounts of H and OH are equal, but when another substance is dissolved in the water, the amounts become unequal.
How
unequal is what pH is all about.

Let’s do two quick experiments:

• Imagine you have a glass of pure water. As we just described, the water has the same amount of H atoms as it has molecules of OH—because it’s pure. But now add some sodium bicarbonate (also known as baking soda) to the water. What happens? Sodium bicarbonate molecules chemically react with water molecules, swapping atoms here and there. Result: There are now more OH molecules in the water than H atoms.

You probably never noticed, but the Earth rotates 1.5 milliseconds slower every century.

• Now take another glass of pure water, and this time add vinegar to it. The main ingredient in vinegar: acetic acid. When it’s mixed with water, chemical reactions take place—and there is now much more H than OH in the water.

What you’ve just seen (if you could see it) is the core of the science behind pH. Some substances, such as baking soda, produce an excess of OH when dissolved in water. These substances are known as
bases
. Other substances, such as vinegar, produce an excess of H. These are known as
acids
. And each one has its own particular way of acting out here in the real world.

TRY IT AT HOME

Bases.
Take something like common soap. You know how when you mix soap with water it feels slippery? That’s because the main ingredient in soap is a base (most commonly lye) which, when mixed with water, produce excess OH molecules. What do OH molecules do when they come into contact with your skin? They chemically react with the oils on your skin, changing their molecular structure, and making them feel like what we think of as slippery...and soapy. This is just one characteristic that’s common to all bases, and it’s all because of the excess OH produced when bases are mixed with water.

Acids.
Now let’s use lemon juice, or citric acid, which, as the name suggests, is an acid. Put a piece of lemon in your mouth. The lemon juice mixes with the water in your saliva and, like all acids, creates an abundance of H, or hydrogen atoms. What do all those hydrogen atoms do in your mouth? They interact with specialized taste buds that send signals to your brain that you interpret as
sour
. This is just one characteristic of all acids: They all taste sour—and it’s all because of the hydrogen atoms created when acids are mixed with the water in your saliva.

THE NUMBERS

pH is measured on a scale from 0 to 14. Pure water is rated 7, right in the middle. Because it contains equal amounts of H and OH, it’s called
neutral
. Substances with a pH below 7 are acids, and those above 7 are bases. The lower the number, the more
acidic
the substance is; the higher the number, the more
basic
it is.

Hitler’s typewriter is exhibited at the Hall of History in Bessemer, Alabama.

Here are the pH level of some common substances, starting with the acids:

• Egg yolks are slightly acidic, with a pH of about 5.5

• Vinegar is more acidic. It has a pH of around 2.2

• The acid in your stomach has a pH of 1

• Hydrochloric acid, a very strong acid, has a pH of 0

On the other side of the scale are the bases:

• Egg whites are slightly basic, with a pH of about 8.2

• Baking soda is a little more basic—right around 8.5

• Ammonia has a pH of about 11

• Lye (sodium hydroxide) is very basic, with a pH of 14

pH AND YOU

What’s the pH level of your blood? Between 7.35 and 7.45...and it had better stay there. If it drops to 6.8 or rises to 7.8 for very long, you’re dead. That’s one of the amazing things about pH: Nature has very strict limits on pH levels. Just a few examples: