How Slime, Fart Sounds Helped Young Rochester Hills Splash Pad Victim Find His Laugh Again

Royal Oak — Janek Bebout grinned as he cued up his instrument, as proud and prepared with his jar of hot-pink slime as any classically trained musician making an orchestral debut.

First, the 8-year-old explained, the slime is warmed with a short massage. Lift it slightly so an air pocket forms at the base of its container. Then, squish.

Flerrrrrrrp.

"And then comes the fart," he said. "A pretty good one. I bet if you had let that one rip it would feel good."

Cue the giggles.

The third-grader's peal of laughter at the flatulent sound he made with a jar of slime was integral to Friday's press conference at the children's wing of Corewell Health William Beaumont University Hospital in Royal Oak, where Janek and his grandmother Barbara Soffin donated 2,409 containers of slime to pediatric patients. Each container is topped with a sticker that says "Janek's laughter."

Janek, his 4-year-old brother, Julen, and their mother, Johanna Bebout, were among the nine people injured in a mass shooting last summer at a Rochester Hills splash pad. Janek's injuries were severe, leading to major surgery, a two-week hospital stay and repeated tests, pricks and pokes from doctors. The Rochester Hills resident is blind as a result of his injury and uses a cane to navigate the world.

Janek's effervescent attitude touched the medical team that took on the highly emotional job of caring for a child who had been among those injured in a mass shooting, said Amanda Lefkof, a child life specialist at Corewell in Royal Oak. She said Janek and his brother Julen were "an inspiration" to everyone who worked with them.

"Even though (Janek) was going through such a hard thing, he brought laughter and he brought smiles to every nurse and every doctor and every surgeon that walked in his room and took care of him," Lefkof said. "It just made you want to keep going back."

Slime was integral to the laughter and smiles, she said. One of her tricks for raising the spirits of hospitalized children, particularly boys, is to encourage them to find lighthearted ways to mess with their caregivers.

Janek appeared on Friday to be a natural.

He explained his method: "A doctor came in, or a nurse, and I put the slime under my blanket and then I made a fart noise, and they thought that I farted," he said. "And then I pulled the slime out, and they were like, 'Whoa.'"

Seeing Janek return to the hospital in good health and with a mission to share joy with other patients is moving, Lefkof said, although she's not sure where she'll store the thousands of jars of donated slime.

"I think our favorite thing is being able to see our patients come back doing well," Lefkof said. "Not only is he doing well, just rocking it with his cane and feeling good, but wanting to give back to other children that are going through hard times. It's such a meaningful, full-circle moment."

Finding toys Janek would enjoy after he lost his sight was a learning curve for the family, said Soffin, Janek's grandma. She scrambled to find something to entertain him in the hospital and landed on a little container of slime.

"He started playing with it, and he belly-laughed because it made 'boy noises,' like fart sounds, and he laughed so hard," Soffin said, the sound of Janek making those "boy noises" echoing in the background. "When he laughed, my son hit his knees and he cried and said 'Mama, you gave me my son's laughter back.'"

After he was released from the hospital, Janek told Soffin he wanted to collect slime for the other kids who were hospitalized. She agreed, and before Christmas wrote a post on Facebook asking her friends to help Janek's wish come true.

"I couldn't even open my front door at one point in time," Soffin said. "I think we cleaned Amazon out (of slime)."

Soffin said she hopes Nickelodeon, the children's television network that cornered the market on slime entertainment in the 1980s, takes up the charge and donates slime to kids in hospitals around the country.

Soffin said Janek and his family are recovered from their physical injuries. They're now focused on their emotional recovery.

"By laughing today and having fun with slime, it might be simple to some people," she said. "It's actually everything to us."

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