Junior Edition Bundle Read online

  The

  WORST-CASE SCENARIO

  Survival Handbook:

  Junior Edition

  By David Borgenicht and Robin Epstein

  Illustrated by Chuck Gonzales

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  CHAPTER 1 Survival Skills at Home

  How to Make Your Room Shipshape

  How to Survive a Nosy Sibling

  How to Keep Your Journal Secret

  How to Survive Being Grounded

  How to Clean Your Plate of Something You Hate

  How to Increase a Skimpy Allowance

  How to Make Your Younger Sibling Bearable

  How to Soothe a Peeved Parental Unit

  CHAPTER 2 Survival Skills at School

  How to Ride the Bus without Getting Schooled

  How to Get by When You’re Late to Class

  Option for the Bold: Sneak In

  Option for the Slightly Less Daring: Give an Excuse

  How to Survive Going “Splat” in the Cafeteria

  How to Ace a Spelling Test without Spell-Check

  How to Survive a Trip to the Principal’s Office

  How to Survive a Bad Report Card

  How to Get a Decent Photo on Picture Day

  How to Eat Lunch by Yourself . . . and Enjoy It

  How to Give an Oral Report without Passing Out

  CHAPTER 3 Survival Skills for Your Social Life

  How to Get Beyond a Bully

  How to Make Friends When You’re the New Kid on the Block

  How to Survive Farting in Public

  How to Outsmart a Prankster

  Giving a Wedgie

  Foiling the Wedger

  Giving a Wet Willie

  Foiling Young William

  How to Make a Quick Fix on a Fashion Disaster

  Split Pants

  Gum in Your Hair

  Broken Zipper

  How to Take the Bite out of Braces

  How to Shake, Rattle, and Roll through a School Dance

  If You Want to Dance . . .

  If You Don’t Want to Dance . . .

  How to Survive an Embarrassing Adult

  The “Right Back Atcha” Method

  The “Moral High Ground” Approach

  CHAPTER 4 Survival Skills for the Outdoors

  How to Walk to School in Nasty Weather

  How to Survive Outdoor Chores

  Raking Leaves

  Shoveling Snow

  Washing the Family Car

  How to Survive a Canine Encounter

  Don’t Touch a Hair on His Head

  Four Legs Beat Two Every Time

  How to Deal with Poo on Your Shoe

  How to Deal with Things That Sting

  If Stung

  How to Handle a Bicycle Misadventure

  Slipped Chain

  Slippery Roads

  How to Survive Getting Lost in the Woods

  Appendix

  Useful Schoolyard Comebacks

  Handy Excuses for Not Handing in Your Homework

  Contract with Nosy Brother or Sister re: “Staying Out of My Stuff”

  Contract with Kid Brother or Sister re: “Hang Time”

  About the Authors and Illustrator

  Introduction

  You’ll often hear adults say they wish they could be kids again. They say things like, “Oooh, childhood—such a delicious and carefree time of life! No responsibilities, nothing to worry about . . . why, it’s practically perfection on a plate!”

  Puh-lease!

  After you’ve stopped snorting with laughter, don’t you want to reply, “Um, hello? Earth to Oldie McMoldy! Do you really not recall what it’s like to climb a mountain of homework every night? Could you have possibly forgotten what it’s like to deal with the most annoying, wedgie-giving brother ever? Do you honestly not remember how hard it is to convince others it wasn’t you—it was the dog that just farted right next to you?”

  Being a kid is no cakewalk down Easy Street with an ice-cream cone in your hand. But there’s plenty of fun to be had every day—as long as you know how to steer clear of the dog poo in your path. That’s where this book comes in: It offers step-by-step instructions, clever comebacks, and excellent excuses that will help you breeze through tough times, side-stepping the poo with a smile on your face.

  If you find yourself in a sticky situation at home—say, your allowance is skimpier than a teeny-weeny bikini, or your little sib won’t stay out of your stuff—we have excellent solutions to help you deal. Maybe you got a bad report card, or it’s picture day at school and you didn’t know it—we’ve got strategies to help you cope. We even tackle the great outdoors, offering foolproof fixes if you have to walk to school in the worst weather or deal with things that sting.

  If you experiment with some of the techniques we recommend, we bet you’ll not only find some great solutions to life’s little mysteries, you’ll also have a blast!

  —David Borgenicht and Robin Epstein

  CHAPTER 1

  Survival Skills at Home

  How to Make Your Room Shipshape

  If dirty laundry, trash, and toys are scattered all over your floor, these steps will help get the “CleanYourRoomImmediately” monkeys off your back.

  1 Divide and conquer.

  Start by finding all items of clothing and putting them into one pile. Next, gather up all pieces of trash and put them in a second pile. In a third pile, collect all your toys and the remaining random stuff.

  2 Scoop and dunk.

  Scoop all the contents of pile number one into the nearest laundry hamper. Wheel a garbage can up to pile number two, and perfect your slam dunk as you toss all of your trash into it (making sure to recycle recyclables!). Finally, see pile number three just sitting there in the middle of your room? Give yourself ten minutes to put away as many things as you can.

  3 If you have anything left . . .

  Still looking at a pile of stuff? Well, you won’t see it if you shove it under your bed, will you? So don’t dilly-dally—put that pile where the sun don’t shine.

  4 Make the bed by using the “breadspread.”

  Making a bed that you’re just going to mess up later that night feels like a time waster. So don’t think of this as making your bed. Think of it as topping your bed sandwich with “breadspread.” Find the exact middle of your bedspread or comforter and place it in the center of your bed. Now smooth down the spread so that its corners line up with the corners of the bed and the extra material drapes off the sides of the bed. Voilô! The results look good enough to eat!

  Bin There, Done That!

  Don’t like chucking your stuff? Stacking crates, like the kind you buy at a housewares store—or the milk crates used at supermarkets—can be your best friend if you’re the pack-rat type. You can store anything and everything in these bins. And because they stack on top of one another, they look tidy, which means you’ll be able to fool people into thinking you’re tidy, too.

  5 Make like a dog and sniff out any remaining problems.

  Starting at your door, get down on all fours, Fido-style. Let your nose lead you around the room to sniff out any overlooked socks or bags of cheese puffs. Dispose of your discoveries as appropriate.

  6 Next time, convince, beg, or bribe someone to help you with the cleanup.

  The more hands pitching in, the faster the job gets done. Old people realize this: That’s probably why they had your younger sibling(s) in the first place. So recruit away. You might need to offer little sibs some sort of reward in exchange for their help. If so, tell them that by cleaning with you they’ll learn the famous “make like a dog” trick (see step 5). The youngest of younger sibs might
just go for that one!

  BE AWARE • Cleaning your room is a task that will need to be done again and again, unless you can think of a more permanent solution. You could take a vow of poverty and donate your possessions to charity, but that would mean giving away your favorite stuff. Or, you could try to convince your family that your mess is actually an art installation. It’s okay if they don’t completely grasp it—you are an avant-garde artist, which means you are ahead of the times.

  How to Survive a Nosy Sibling

  It’s a fact of life: Brothers and sisters are always getting into each other’s business. So, here’s how to keep yours out of yours.

  * Lights out.

  Before leaving your room, unscrew all the light bulbs and pull your shades down. Store the bulbs in a dresser drawer for safekeeping and stash a flashlight there, too. When your sibling comes in, it’ll be too dark for her to see anything.

  * Let her know two can play the snooping game.

  If Sis sneaks into your room, sneak into hers and “borrow” her favorite toy. When she demands you give it back, make her sign the “Staying Out of My Stuff” contract on page 126.

  HOW TO KEEP YOUR JOURNAL SECRET

  * Use a decoy journal.

  Create a fake journal to throw the snooper off track, and hide it in a place you know the snooper will look. The entries in your fake journal should be believable enough that the snooper stops looking for the real journal. Or, you could address the snooper directly, like this: “I get the feeling my little bro found my journal. He’s probably reading it now, aren’t you, snoop?!”

  * Hide your journal in a super-hard-to-find spot.

  Snoopers search predictable spots: under your mattress, at the bottom of your desk drawer, or in your book bag. So, hide your journal behind books on your bookshelf, fold it into a sweater you keep at the bottom of your dresser drawer, or tape it under the lid of a random shoebox.

  How to Survive Being Grounded

  Grounding takes many forms, but it always starts the same way: An adult has gotten steamed, and now he’s determined to make you feel the heat. Try these ideas to make that “heat” a little less punishing!

  1 Pretend you agree with the decision to punish you.

  Adults believe that grounding teaches you a lesson. “Agreeing” with the grounding makes them think the lesson is being learned. Say, “I understand why you’re grounding me. And if I were in your shoes, I’d ground me, too.” Hold your laughter until you are safely back in your room.

  2 Sleep it off.

  If you’re sent to your room, remember there’s a very comfortable bed in there. Take this time to chill out and daydream.

  3 Do that project you keep meaning to do.

  Think of this period of “punishment” as an opportunity to kickstart your art project/science experiment/future as a guitar god.

  4 Do the jailhouse workout.

  Prisoners know that doing push-ups makes the time go by more quickly, with the added bonus of making their upper bodies strong. Just imagine the look on your personal jailer’s face when you emerge from your holding cell with bulging biceps!

  5 Renegotiate the terms of your punishment.

  Give the punisher some time to cool down, then calmly ask if she will consider letting you out early. Without cracking up, say, “I know what I did was wrong. I’ve learned my lesson. May I please be paroled?”

  BE AWARE • After you’ve spent a couple of hours doing arts and crafts in your room, you might discover something alarming: You don’t want to leave! Don’t get too freaked out. This is a common reaction to imprisonment, and the cure is simple. As soon as you get released from the slammer, call a friend and plan to hang out.

  Arguments to Make If Your Stuff Gets Taken Away

  Television privileges: “If I can’t watch TV, I won’t be able to watch the Learning Channel. You want me to learn, don’t you?”

  Video game privileges: “I don’t play video games for fun—I play them to improve my hand-eye coordination. Don’t foil my attempts at coordination, please!”

  Skateboard privileges: “But I need my skate-board to get to the flower shop in order to buy you a “You’re the Best Parent Ever’ bouquet.”

  outdoor privileges: “Wouldn’t it be better if I worked off my excess energy outside instead of in here, near your fragile valuables?”

  Mall privileges: “But I finally saved enough of my babysitting money to buy you that waffle maker you’ve been eyeing.”

  Cell phone privileges: “But what if I get lost, or need to call to let you know I’m going to be a little bit late?”

  How to Clean Your Plate of Something You Hate

  “Enjoy!” your friend’s mom says as she serves you something smelling like dirty socks. “Bon appétit!” cries the waiter, handing you a plateful of something that looks and smells like cat food. “Eat up!” instructs Grandma, giving you meatloaf she baked her dentures into. When you’re a prisoner at the dinner table, there’s no escaping till you deal with that meal.

  * Sauce it up.

  Disguise the taste of something disgusting with a generous helping of something tastier. To avoid getting caught, put the condiment on the side of your plate instead of pouring it directly on your food. Use your fork to push bite-sized pieces through the pool of sauce. Now lift that forkful of yuck to your mouth and stay focused on the taste of the sauce—chew quickly, swallow, and repeat.

  Top 10 Flavor Savers

  Here’s a list of condiments and sauces that can really disguise a foul food.

  1. Ketchup

  2. Mustard

  3. Salsa

  4. Spaghetti sauce

  5. Gravy

  6. Barbecue sauce

  7. Applesauce

  8. Soy sauce

  9. Tartar sauce

  10. Relish

  * Breathe to relieve.

  Once you start chewing, begin blowing air out of your nose in quick, short bursts. Concentrating on your breathing not only gets you to think less about the food, it prevents you from smelling it. The end result? You’ll barely be able to taste it (because taste and smell are linked).

  * Flush it away.

  If your meal is so bad that swallowing it is making you gag, then turn to your best ally in this situation: your drink. Chew a small portion of food at a time, and then take a sip of your drink to ease it down.

  * Bread it.

  A simple dinner roll can be a lifesaver when you’re faced with a dreadful dinner. Bread is especially good when you don’t like the texture of your food (like if it’s slimy). Just take a bite of bread with every bite of slime. The blandness of the bread will also help mask bad flavors.

  * Practice “Mind Over Meal.”

  In extreme cases, you may need to call upon your imagination. Consider it a challenge to see if you can imagine that the liver you’re eating is actually a delicious grilled steak.

  BE AWARE • When food is spicy, drink milk instead of water to lessen the burn. Another heat-beater is buttered bread—the fat in the butter counteracts the heat.

  * Disguise it with mashed potatoes.

  If you really can’t deal with the taste, the thick whiteness of mashed potatoes provides the perfect cover for the horror on your plate. Lift the mashed potatoes with your fork, and slide that unwanted crud under the cloud of mashed mush using your knife. Other useful places to stow food are under a helping of peas or chunky applesauce. Try cutting your food into tiny pieces first—this makes it easier to hide.

  How to Increase a Skimpy Allowance

  You need more dough, simple as that. Here’s how to get your parents to agree that you deserve a raise.

  * Compare the going rate.

  Find out how much allowance your friends get. Then write up a chart to show that you’ve done your research and your wages are lagging.

  Money-Saving Tips to Make Do with What Ya Got

  • Create a budget and stick to it.

  Decide you won’t spend any more than X do
llars a day.

  • Carry around very little cash.

  If you don’t have it on hand, you can’t throw it away.

  • Keep a change jar and make daily deposits.

  All those nickels and dimes add up.

  • Don’t buy anything.

  Sometimes the most obvious tip is the best of all.

  * Acknowledge that with greater money comes greater responsibility.

  Offer to spend more time with your annoying little sister if you get a pay bump.

  * Be your own union.

  Just like a labor union, negotiate for fixed raises once a year. Your birthday would be the perfect occasion.

  Top 5 Ways to Get More Dough

  1. Go couch diving.

  Couch cushions are a magnet for change. Pull them up, and you’re likely to locate some coins hiding deep in the couch cracks.

  2. Do odd jobs.

  Is it winter? Shovel snow for dough. Is it spring? Water the flowers for that green. Is it summer? Fan your family for some coin. Is it fall? Rake leaves for legal tender.

  3. Rent out your toys.

  If you’re not playing with a certain toy anymore, rent it to another kid for a week and charge a set fee.

  4. Teach old folks how to use electronic equipment.

  People used to say, “You can’t trust anyone over thirty.” Now people say, “You can’t trust anyone over thirty to set up their own computer equipment.” Offer your services to the nearest technically challenged oldster and teach her how to master her cell phone or laptop.

  5. Become a short-order cook.

  Offer to make special brown-bag creations for your classmates. They’ll be glad to avoid the grub the cafeteria is serving.