So Sick!

To Lauren, Natalie and Courtney.
With thanks to my family
.
J.A. M
AWTER

For Huntly. This is your sort of book. Enjoy!
G
US
G
ORDON

Jellyfish undies suck.

But not as much as seaweed undies. Now,
they
tickle your nads — crabs creeping, sea lice leaping — and make you want to re-arrange your skin!

No, jellyfish undies don’t do that. They just swill around your cheeks, jamming up your crack and jousting with your balls. That scientist who said jellyfish have no brains didn’t know what he was on about.

I guess you’re wondering how come I was wearing jellyfish undies. ‘Cause Ollie wore the seaweed ones, that’s why. Now, before you go thinking we’re sickos or something, let me explain.

HSIE. That’s Human Society and It’s Environment.

It’s this subject at school that Mr Bryson teaches. This term we’re studying ‘Environmental Matters’.

Load of crap! I’m not being off. I’m talking sewerage. You see, sewerage
is
a load of crap but it’s also an environmental matter. Well, Mr Bryson thinks so. And it’s because sewerage is a load of crap
and
an environmental matter that we’re doing this presentation. It’s on sewerage treatment plants.
Bor-r-ring!
you might say. And you’d be dead right. As boring as. So Ollie n’ me decided to make it more interesting . . .

It all started when the toilet at school got bunged up. It took a couple of morons — and a mountain of loo paper — before anyone realised it wouldn’t flush. Mr Bryson had been trying to get a plumber out for days but there was some sort of delay. So, he’d stuck this big sign on the door saying, Toilet Blocked. Do Not Use. Penalty of Death.
Fun-n-n-y!
Anyway, that meant we were down to four. You’d think four toilets would be plenty and normally it would,
except
when a plague of gastro comes to school. It hit faster than you can spell ‘p o o’.

I was scoffing chips when the dreaded lurgy hit. It was as though nothing else existed but my gut and my butt. I did this runner and found . . . how impressive is this? A queue! First time in the history of schools the boys’ dunny has a queue!

If I wasn’t so desperate I’d have gone to Mr Bryson and asked to use the teacher’s loo, but the way my gut was firing I was about to spray the floor. So I did what any self-respecting person would do. I ignored the dunny blocked sign, barrelled in and lifted the lid. The pong rose like a mushroom cloud from a nuclear reaction. I was too desperate to care.

But the boys in the queue did. Especially Ollie.

Ollie lets out this yelp. Only he didn’t just yelp. He said
that
word to describe what I was doing, the one we all know you should never use in school (not if you value your spare time). So, Ollie yells out the ‘s’ word. How could he know that at that exact same moment Miss Quinn would walk past?

In storms Miss Quinn. A female in the boys’ dunny — she could get the sack for that!

If I wasn’t in such a state I’d have seen the funny side of things. Ollie hollering till he was fit to bust and me coming out of the forbidden loo still doing myself up.

‘I had to!’ I cried. But would Miss Quinn give me a chance to explain? Course not. Dragged me through the playground with my fly still undone, calling for
‘Oliver Grant!’
to follow.

We were marched to Mr Bryson. Past Stella Mazoni, a dead ringer for Britney Spears’ little sister and the love of my life. I tried to act cool, but it’s hard to look cool with your heels scraping the ground and an air vent in your daks.

‘It was the gastro,’ I began to explain to Mr Bryson ten minutes later. ‘The stench!’ says Ollie. ‘I was busting,’ I said.

‘It just popped out,’ goes on Ollie, putting a hand over his mouth to demonstrate.

Mr Bryson would not listen. Instead, he gave us this foul lecture about
foul
diseases and
foul
mouths. ‘I’ll hear no more excuses,’ continued Mr Bryson. ‘Unless they come under the heading of Environmental Matters.’

I wanted to protest, to pulverise the wall, the door, anything. But the only thing that got pulverised was me n’ Ollie.

We got the assignment: the presentation on Environmental Matters. And just to rub our noses in it the topic Mr Bryson gave us?

Sewerage Treatment Processes
.

‘This is a fascinating topic, you two. See if you can do it justice.’

Ollie n’ me went to the library to do research. It was while we were up to our eyeballs with important things like micro-organisms and oxidisation that a phrase caught my eye: beneficial bacteria.

Now, I’ve always been fascinated by bugs. Not the creepy-crawly-on-your-arm sort of bugs, but the creepy-crawly-in-your-gut sort of bugs.

I’m pretty sure it all goes back to ‘germs’. Remember when you didn’t wash your hands before dinner?
You’ll get germs!
Or if you didn’t wash your hands after a pee?
You’ll get germs!
Or if you shared your drink bottle, or touched a girl, even just sat at a girl’s desk? That’s right —
germs!

For a long time there they had me worried. In Year One I could’ve answered to Clean Bean or Neat Freak I was so particular. But then I noticed . . . I didn’t get sick after dinner. My hands didn’t drop off when I didn’t wash them. And girls were just girls. So, I gave germs the flick. But, here they were again.

“Germs, aka bacteria.”
Beneficial
bacteria, what’s more.

We learnt that these little guys were important. They actually, get this,
eat
sewerage.

Sick!

They eat the sewerage and help to turn it back to drinking water. And I thought those African tribes who drink their pee were off! But I was hooked. I wanted to learn more.

Enter
Pseudomonas putida
.

‘Let’s do our talk,’ I said to Ollie, reading from a book at the same time, ‘on the bacteria that metabolise the organic materials in sewerage to release CO
₂
, H
₂
O and energy.’

Ollie gave it some serious consideration. I could see him weighing up the scientific possibilities. Finally, he said, ‘Huh?’

‘Let’s do our talk on bacteria that eat sewerage to turn it back into the water we drink,’ I explained slowly.

Ollie went greener than algae. ‘Are you serious? You mean that that stuff from the tap is … ?’