Health in a jocular vein - children's ideas of anatomy

Health in a Jocular Vein

Take one class of elementary school youngsters, mix them thoroughly with several pounds of unfamiliar facts about good health practices, then snake them up with an examination, and you have the perfect formula for instant confusion. More than 30 years of teaching have convinced me of this. Here are some examples:

"Digestion is best accomplished on an empty stomach."

"Chicken pox has a plural known as poultry."

"Gymnastics exercise our outsides, while genetics exercise our insides."

"There are cavities all through our bodies. This is all right as long as they don't get in our teeth."

Another student was nothing less than brilliant in explaining the difference between health and hygiene: "Health is just keeping well, while hygiene is being clean about it."

One intense fourth grader took a gratifying interest in good health habits. In the four-page report that resulted, you might know there would be a couple "youngsterisms." Here they are:

"To stay healthy, it is important to get our share of sleep and air."

"Though we do not know it all yet, we of the humans are learning much about good health. We know, for example, that in order to live forever, we need only --. This is as far as we have learned so far."

Quite often the youngsters are more accurate than may be apparent at first glance. Sometimes it's just the angle of vision (from childhood) and how they phrase their knowledge that creates the humor;

"Doctors today know the should specialize. Like cows give milk, while chickens prefer to lay eggs."

"A bruise is caused when you hit or blow your skin."

"Meat helps build bones and muscles, while carrots prefer to build your eyes."

"Ancestors are important. Without them you probably would not have had a father or mother. Everyone ought to have an ancestor."

"I already know the right way to brush my teeth is not sideways. I always brush my teeth upside and down."

Looking at anatomy as the kids sometimes see it is like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, but it's fun. Only a child could dream up an explanation like this: "The difference between bones and skeletions is that we live ones have bones while the dead ones have skeletions."

The author of that definition happens to be the same chap who concluded: "All those hotter than 100 are of a bad temper."

Let's investigate a few more little-known "facts" about anatomy:

"There are 64 bones in our arms and only 62 in our legs. Where the mistake is is yet to be found."

"Inside each ear they have found hammers, anvils, and stirrups. So the ears have a good excuse to ache sometimes."

"We humans are both vertebrates and mammals. You see, we are smart enough to know how to be both at the same time."

"Here are four tests of aliveness. Do you eat? Do you grow and change? Do you use oxygen? Do you move? If you answered yes, yes, yes, and yes, then yippee, because you are alive."

"Trunks are where we put our valuables. The human trunk has such valuables as stomach, hearts, and other stuff."

What's a brain for? "The brain is what tells everything else to get busy and do around."

What about the eyes? "My eyes look out in the light and see things for may brain, where there is very little light."

And the ears? "Without ears I would not be able to hear all the sounds I hear, like WHOOoooo. Gik gak. Eeeaaaooo. FLIBE-FLABOS. Sometimes I am happy I have ears." The nerves? "Nerves are what we need to get messages up to the brain. And they let you face anybody and be brave."

If the realization that they don't know everything is the first step toward learning, these next students are well on the road to knowledge: "An artery carries the blood to or from the heart. I forget which, but the body remembers, and that is the important thing."

"Every time we think, the brain gets all electroded. I don't know why, but we don't feel anything up there, so it doesn't hurt."

When members of the grade school set turn their attention to a discussion of various medicines, gaffes seem to come as thick as chalk dust. Here are five of my favorites:

"The benefit of iodine is if a person hurts himself he can drink some to stop the pain."

"Now that I know aspirin can help stop inflamed joints, the next time I hear it being talked about like it is marvelous I will just twinkle an eye and know why."

"Doctors know hypodermics can never be fatal if they are shot in the arms or other nonfatal places."

"A local anesthetic is medicine given to you in your hometown."

"An anecdote is medicine we all have to take."

Anecdote--antidote; when a couple of misplaced letters change the meaning of a word so drastically, what chance do these kids have? Here are other examples in which one misunderstood word let to some futile but funny remarks:

"One of the most painful of the minor injuries is the home grown toenail."

"Medical people now know how to pastures our cows be milking them in pastures."

"Standing on your legs too long causes very close veins."

"If anybody gets hit in the jocular vein it can be fatal."

"Light enters our eye through our corona."

Ever heard of the word "oinkment"? I hadn't until I came across this gem: "Oinkment is to put on rags to put off colds."

A weakness of mine is for punsters -- the ones who pun unintentionally, like these:

"Infantigo is one of the diseases of infanthood."

"Rats carry the blue bonnet plague."

"Don't forget to not look at the sun as you travel or you will get a migrate headache."

Once I explained that germs are too small to be seen without the aid of a microscope. So how did it come out in a test paper the next weeks? "Germs are smaller than a naked eye."

The boys and girls whom I enjoy talking with the most aren't always the straight-A paragons who can be depended on to echo back all the right answers. The ones who are the most fun conversationally are the ad-libbers of the classroom, those dauntless characters with freewheeling imaginations. Here are four wild guessers at work:

"One important health rule is to take a bath every day. I thought about it all last week."

"We should take a bath once in the summer and not quite so often in the winter."

"Dr. Harvey prolonged practically everybody's life by inventing the bloodstream."

"High places will give you highdrafobia."

If any of their definitions ever causes Webster to turn over in his grave, he will have to do so with a smile. Here's what I mean:

"An appendix is something found in the back of a book. Sometimes they get in people and have to be taken out."

"Bury bury is a usually fatal disease."

"Clavicle is a medical condition known as having a collar bone."

"Hives are caused by fooling around with bees."

"Humanity lives many years longer than people."

"While mold has spores, humans have pores. It is one way to tell us apart."

"Going down our neck is the sacoughagus, telling us when to cough."

"Scurry is a disease caused by too fast living."

"A snore is a breath that talks."

Spontaneous generation refers to a generation that prefers to do without mothers and fathers.

Youngsters certainly have their own opinions--and few are hesitant to express them:

"After seeing an optometrist, many people have found that their eyes and headaches have disappeared. And you don't have to take your clothes off."

"It is important to stay in bed and get plenty of rest after a siege of health."

"The people who suffer most are the ones with diseases in remote places."

"Sometimes I have heard talk about rivers being swollen. Swollen rivers are caused by infectious germs in the water."

"One good reason to go to the moon is because anybody weighing 250 pounds woudl weigh only 42 pounds on the moon."

One tyke reported (with the aid of a bright-purple Crayola): "When they asked my brother if he would like to know what his cholesterol level is, he rolled his eyes and flashed his teeth and said sure."

The following views expressed by fifth-grade students are their own and do not represent those of the author, the school, or the word at large:

"Hoof in mouth disease is something orators get."

"Streptomycin is one of our most essential diseases."

"Although we use oxygen to breathe, we know that it can cause rust. It is another case of a mixed blessing."

"When they picked the bicycle off me I was found to have many critical cuts and bruises, but the sprung ankle was probably my best injury."

Much of the juvenilia that I've collected through the years has been devoted to a discussion of effective first aid:

"If anybody swallows something down the wrong way, you should stick your fist in his stomach until he is dead."

"There are several ways to apply artificial respiration. It is polite to ask the victim which way he wants it."

In an essay entitled "Accidents and First Aids," a moppet seemed able to think of only one good first-aid rule--but she made it unforgettable:

"The four things you should do for somebody if you do not know where he is hurt are (1). be sure not to move him; (2). if he asks to go to a hospital, tell him, 'In a minute,' but do not move him; (3). let him talk unless he wants to move around; (4). if you or he are cold, you can get some hot chochlet, but fix it so he can't move."

And here's some sage advice about accident prevention: "Many car accidents are caused by lack of stopping. Like if a brake stops working, don't try to go. Whenever a person gets to a good stopping place, he should know enough to stop there and end."

OK, I can take a hint.

Mark Evans is presently retired from 32 years of teaching. He is the author of several published articles and three books, including one for Golden Books, A Blizzard Is When It Snows Sideways. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

COPYRIGHT 1991 Review and Herald Publishing Association
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group