Tag: Neighborhoods

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Neighborhoods — Money, Mothers

Money

• In 1978, running back Preston Pearson and his Dallas Cowboys lost in the Super Bowl to the Pittsburgh Steelers. As it happened, Mr. Pearson and his wife lived in Pittsburgh, and he gave his check for playing in the Super Bowl to his wife to deposit in a Pittsburgh bank. The bank teller looked at the size of the check, then told Mrs. Pearson that she was entitled to a free gift, although she might not want it. She didn’t. The free gift was a recording of the Pittsburgh Steelers fight song.

• Spanish painter Francisco Goya could be both generous and shrewd with his money. When his brother wanted to borrow money from him, Mr. Goya recognized that often relatives are very slow in repaying money borrowed from other family members. Therefore, Mr. Goya gave the money to a friend and told him to lend it to his brother without telling his brother the true source of the money.

• When movie critic Roger Ebert was a child, he met J.C. Penney, the founder of the famous department store. Mr. Penney, then an old man, gave young Roger a penny and some financial advice — if you want dimes and dollars to take care of themselves, you need to take care of pennies and nickels. Roger saved ten cents, then he went to see a movie for nine cents. This left a penny, which he promptly invested in an all-day sucker.

Mothers

• When Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast Kerri Strug was in the fourth grade, she spent six months working on a science project: a biosphere in a large aquarium. Unfortunately, when her brother drove her and her science project to school, he had to hit his brakes to avoid a collision with another car. The aquarium shattered, destroying six months of work, with dirt, water, frogs, and fish scattered everywhere. Fortunately, her mother was able to bring Kerri another aquarium, and they put the science project back together. However, Kerri told her mother, “This is the worst day of my life.” Her mother then said something wise and wonderful: “I’ll be happy if this is your worst day.” (For the worst day, it wasn’t so bad — Kerri’s science project won second prize.)

• Soprano Beverly Sills stopped singing and taking voice lessons after giving birth to two children with handicaps. Muffy, her daughter, was a happy child, but she suffered from deafness. Peter, her son, suffered from mental retardation. Ms. Sills devoted much time to her children, but eventually her husband thought that it would be best if she did more than look after and help their children. Therefore, for her 33^rd birthday, he gave her 52 round-trip airplane tickets between Boston, where they lived, and New York, where Estelle Liebling, her voice teacher, lived. Ms. Sills began taking voice lessons again, and she began singing in public again.

• Children’s book writer Phyllis Reynolds Naylor grew up during the Depression, when money was hard to come by. Entering kindergarten, she had only two dresses: one with red checks and one with blue checks. Her mother told her that if she alternated the dresses, wearing one the first day and the other the second day and so on, then everyone would think that she had more dresses than she really had. This made young Phyllis think how clever her mother was.

• Nancy Stanford sat in a rocking chair to read a story to a group of first graders who sat at her feet. As she read the story, she felt a small hand rub her ankle, then her calf. Rather than disturb story time, she decided to continue reading the story to its end, then reprimand the child rubbing her leg. At the end of the story, she looked down, and a little boy told her, “Your leg feels just like my mother’s.” She did not reprimand the child.

• Ezra Stone played the part of teenager Harry Aldrich on The Aldrich Family radio program. Following World War II, because space was lacking, he shared his dressing room with singer Jo Stafford. One day, his mother came to visit and was surprised to find his dressing room closet filled with frilly feminine garments. Mr. Stone, a happily married man, had to convince his mother that he was not keeping a mistress on the side.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Neighborhoods — Language, Letters, Money

Language

• As an elite figure skater, Sarah Hughes had the opportunity to compete in other countries while taking Spanish in high school. When she learned that she would compete in Mexico, she was excited about practicing her Spanish on the Mexicans. It didn’t work out the way she expected, though, because the Mexicans were even more excited about practicing their English on Sarah.

• Early in his career, Russian bass Feodor Chaliapine once knew an Italian ballerina named Tornaghi who danced in his country but was homesick for Italy. To comfort her, he used to say all the Italian words he knew at that time: allegro andante religioso moderato.” (Later, he married her.)

Letters

• Sid Fleischman, author of the McBroom comedy series of children’s books, is a very good writer — so are many of the children who write him letters. In his autobiography, The Abracadabra Kid, Mr. Fleischman includes brief selections from some of the letters that children have written him. A few examples: “Dear Sid Fleischman, I have read Mr. Mysterious & Company. It is the second best book I ever read.” “Dear Sid, I think for a man you write pretty good books.” “Sorry I can’t talk long, but I’m planning to write to the president.”

• Composer Franz Joseph Haydn married a woman who was difficult to get along with, and he was happy when his work took him away from her for long periods of time. During one occasion when Mr. Haydn was long away from his wife, a visitor asked him about several unopened letters piled up on his desk. Mr. Haydn replied, “They’re from my wife. We write to each other every month, but I don’t bother to open her letters, and I’m sure she doesn’t open mine.”

• Amelia Earhart flew airplanes at a time when that was dangerous; therefore, at various times in her life, such as immediately before attempting to become the first woman passenger to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, she wrote “popping-off” letters to her family and friends. These were letters that would be delivered to her family and friends if she died in the attempt to set a new record.

• The Wee Pals comic strip features a rainbow of children of all races, both genders, and a few handicaps. Because of the black children in the comic strip, people sometimes wrote the strip’s creator, Morrie Turner, to ask if he really knew any black people. He would write back, “Only my mother and father, my wife, and my son.”

• While working at Marvel Comics, Stan Lee wrote a “Soapbox” column. Of course, he received many, many letters asking many, many questions. One of his favorite letters asked him, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Money

• As a Methodist preacher in Texas, Edwin Porter attended the Annual Conference every year. This was a big deal because at it he would find out to which church he would be assigned for the following year. A Porter family tradition was to take along one of the children to the Annual Conference when he or she reached the age of 11. Alyene Porter, the youngest daughter, wondered why this great privilege was given at the age of 11, instead of some other age. Brother Hugh speculated it was because at age 11 the children’s understanding was more developed, but brother Paul Candler came up with a different reason: “It was the last year we could ride the train for half fare.”

• When telephone psychic Dougall Fraser was working for the Psychic Friends Network, a woman who called herself Champagne called him every morning at 11 a.m. to ask such questions as “When is my husband getting out of jail?” and “When am I getting my welfare check?” Finally, Mr. Fraser could stand it no longer and told her, “Champagne, the next time you want to call me, I want you to take $50, open a window, and throw it out. Because that’s what you’re doing every day. It is a complete waste of your money.” She slammed down the telephone receiver and never called him again.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Neighborhoods — Husbands and Wives

Husbands and Wives

• MAD magazine publisher William M. Gaines met his wife, Annie, through the mail. As a sophomore at Penn State, she was assigned a project on pollution, and she wanted an article on pollution that had appeared in MADmagazine. Unable to find it in her personal collection (she was a MAD fan), she sent a dollar bill to the offices of MAD and requested a copy of the article. Mr. Gaines sent her a note saying, “Never send cash through the mail,” and he enclosed both a check for $1 and an offer to send her the article for free — as long as she sent him a photograph of herself. She sent him a Playboy centerfold along with a detailed list of ways in which she did not resemble the centerfold model. Sometime later, they met in person and liked each other. (Things really got serious when Mr. Gaines met an ex-boyfriend of hers and noticed that the ex-boyfriend was heavy, like him.)

• When American realist painter Andrew Wyeth proposed to Betsy James, she accepted immediately. Later, she said, “I knew at some point somebody was going to find me and know what I was all about. And it happened. Just like that. Boom!” Betsy was responsible for making Andrew independent of the instruction of his father, the eminent illustrator N.C. Wyeth. One day, she saw the two men together with an illustration of an Indian head that Andrew was creating for a book jacket. N.C. was touching up the illustration. Enraged, she left the room, slamming the door behind her. Thereafter, N.C. left his son’s artwork alone.

• Gymnasts can have more than one dream. In 1974, Joan Moore seemed poised to become the United States’ first woman gymnast to win an Olympic medal. At the United States Elite Nationals in 1971, she tied for first in the all-around competition with Linda Matheny. In 1972, she tied for first with Cathy Rigby. In 1973 and 1974, she won with no ties. However, in late 1974, she gave up the dream of an Olympic medal for a dream that was also important to her. She gave up her amateur status and Olympic eligibility so that she and her then-husband, Bob Rice, could open a gymnastics school in Minnesota.

• Insult comedian Don Rickles is much different off stage than he is on. When he first met Bob Newhart’s wife, Ginny, he talked about how much he loved his one-year-old daughter, who was named Mindy, and how much he hated being separated from her when he was on the road performing. After Mr. Rickles had left, Ginny told Bob, “That is the most darling man I’ve ever met. You just want to hug him.” A little later, they caught Mr. Rickles’ act, in which he told the audience, “Ladies and gentlemen, Bob Newhart is here with his wife, a former hooker from Bayonne, New Jersey.” (Despite this beginning, they all became friends and have traveled the world together.)

• Married couples get divorced for different reasons. Early 20^th-century cartoonist Rose Cecil O’Neill was divorced twice in an era when that was very unusual and very suspect. One of her divorces resulted from her habit of speaking baby talk. However, despite this habit she was very capable of producing serious work. One of her cartoons — on a postcard — was titled “Give Mother the Vote: We Need It” and showed her usual cute, cuddly cartoon characters with this verse underneath the cartoon: “Isn’t it a funny thing / That father cannot see / Why Mother ought to have a vote / On how these things should be?”

• After working at the Disney studio, animator John Sibley stopped for a drink. One drink led to another, and he arrived home late — very late. However, his loving wife was waiting for him. She was dressed very elegantly, made up very beautifully, and had been eagerly looking forward to her husband’s taking her out to dine and dance — as he had promised. (It was their wedding anniversary.) Mr. Sibley recognized his error, but being never at a loss for humorous words, he asked her, “What’s new?” Of course, his loving wife forgave him, but it took time. (Three years.)

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David Bruce: Grandparents, Halloween, Homes

Grandparents

• The grandparents of children’s book writer Phyllis Reynolds Naylor were characters. She called her paternal grandparents Pappaw and Mammaw. They began courting when she was an infant, and he was a little boy. He would pick her up and say, “This is the girl I’m going to marry.” They did marry — when Mammaw was 15 years old and still playing with dolls. In contrast, her maternal grandparents were adults when they began to court. Her grandfather sent her grandmother a letter, asking two weeks in advance if he could go with her to church. He also offered to have a prominent doctor send a letter to her father stating that the man who wished to court his daughter had a good character.

• The grandfather of Christian writer Dale Hanson Bourke was quite a lively and feisty character. One day, as he was driving during rush hour, a large bus edged him out of the lane he was driving in. This made Grandpa angry, so he rolled down his window and shouted at the bus driver to get out of his lane. The bus driver refused, saying that his bus was bigger than Grandpa’s car. Therefore, Grandpa reached for a sledgehammer he was hauling in his car, hammered a large dent in the side of the bus, then drove off. Grandpa was also a mighty evangelizer — sometimes he even grabbed people by the lapels of their clothing and asked them, “Are you saved?”

• When Grandma Moses at age 80 was invited to attend her first important one-person art exhibit at the Galerie St. Etienne in New York City, she declined to go. Why? As she explained to the gallery director, Otto Kallir, she had no reason to go — she had already seen all of the paintings. Shortly afterward, she did attend an exhibition of her paintings at a Gimbel Brothers department store in New York City. She brought some of her homemade bread and preserves, reasoning that since she had won prizes for them and not her paintings at the county fair, people would be asking her about food and not about art.

• TV’s Mister Rogers was a rambunctious kid. Whenever he was attempting to walk on a stone wall at his grandparents’ farm and his mother or grandmother would try to stop him, his grandfather, who was named Fred McFeely, would tell them, “Let the kid walk on the wall. He’s got to learn to do things for himself.” Mister Rogers loved his grandfather, and in his TV “neighborhood,” one of the characters was a lively old deliveryman named Mr. McFeely.

• When the young granddaughter of artist Edna Hibel developed “lazy eye” and had to wear an eye patch under her glasses, Ms. Hibel taped over one lens of her glasses and painted a rose on it as a decoration to make wearing the eye patch a more pleasurable experience.

Halloween

• Joe, the young son of Lisa M. Wayman, RN, started chemotherapy to treat his cancer, and his hair fell out. Therefore, for his Halloween costume, he dressed up as his bald father. Young Joe even wore a fake beard. Before he died, he taught his mother not to be so serious all the time and to laugh occasionally.

Homes

• Many families have a hard time sharing a bathroom, which is sometimes the busiest room in a house. However, when Paris Singer of the family that manufactured Singer sewing machines bought modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan a hotel outside Paris to serve as her dancing school, she didn’t have to worry about that problem. Of the hotel’s 200 rooms, 80 were bathrooms!

• Not all volcanic eruptions are swift. In Hawaii, one volcano emitted molten lava slowly. In fact, residents on the island had plenty of time to leave their houses and move their household possessions out of the line of lava. In some cases, people sat on lawn chairs and drank cold beer from a safe distance as they watched the molten lava flow upon and destroy their houses.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Neighborhoods — Gifts, Good Deeds

Gifts

• Dr. Barry Herman, a school principal in New Haven, Connecticut, once bought candy for an ill teacher, then presented it to her, saying, “Something sweet for a sweet person.” Unfortunately, he had bought the candy at random, not bothering to read the label, which said, “Sour balls.”

Good Deeds

• Meredith Mendelson went to sea with Ocean Classroom when she was in high school. She worked hard both mentally and physically — going to sleep was no problem because she was so tired. One of the highlights of the trip was seeing a pod of humpback whales circling their ship. Unfortunately, this peaceful, quiet scene was ruined when several whale-watching boats came out from shore carrying tourists who wanted to see the whales. Their oohs, aahs, and other noises drove the whales away, as did their motors and diesel fuel. The tourists ruined the intimacy of the encounter with the whales for the sailors of Ocean Classroom. By the way, sometimes whales become entangled in nets and flotation devices left behind by fishermen, leading to death. In 2005 in Gordon’s Bag, South Africa, police diver Eben Lourens cut away most of the ropes entangling a southern right whale. National Sea Rescue Institute Gordon’s Bay Station Commander Stuart Burgess said, “We slowly approached [the whale] until we were about 30m away and then cut the engines. The whale swam up and gently bumped our rescue boat. At that point we got good visuals of the problem.” He added, “We could see the ropes and buoys entangled around the tail and the pieces trailing behind her.” Mr. Lourens was deployed ahead of the whale, and as the whale swam past him, he grabbed onto the fishing net and started cutting the ropes. He cut away most of the ropes and all of the flotation devices. Mr. Stuart said, “Although there is still some rope attached to the whale, we were unable to do more and we suspect that the remaining rope will fall free as it untangles.” Mr. Lourens said, “It’s not something I’d done before, so the adrenalin was pumping through me. But it was very satisfying afterwards.” After the rescue, the whale was swimming much more easily. Mr. Burgess said that commercial crayfishers often left their nets behind: “We find them all the time. In one afternoon recently we found four of them.” The nets are hazardous not only for whales, he said, but also for boats — especially at night. Freeing a whale can be very dangerous — even deadly — work. Nan Rice of the Save the Whales Campaign said, “It is very dangerous to attempt such a thing without the proper equipment and tools. The public must take note and not try and do this by themselves. You cannot swim up to a whale and try to cut it loose. It is extremely dangerous.” In New Zealand, a diver was killed during an attempted whale rescue, she said: “The whale slammed its tail down on top of him, and he was gone. I feel that human lives are just as valuable as those of animals, and I don’t think it is right to risk one for the other.”

• Civilians suffer during war, including the American Civil War. A hungry Virginian woman appeared at the Union camp of General Newton M. Curtis, asking for help. However, she was required to take an oath of allegiance to the Union cause before receiving food or other help. This she declined to do because both her husband and her son were fighting for the Confederate cause. Rather than letting her depart without help, General Curtis gave her money from his own pocket so she could buy food and other necessities.

• In July 1863, a 16-year-old Confederate woman named Cornelia Barrett did a remarkable good deed for a dying Yankee soldier. He requested that she write a letter for him to his fiancée. He also requested that she send his fiancée a lock of his hair and his gold ring. She did as he asked, and a few months later she received a letter from the soldier’s sweetheart, thanking her for her kindness.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Neighborhoods — For, Games and Contests, Gifts

Food

• When David B. Feinberg got AIDS, he had to make changes to his diet. For example, he was advised to put on extra pounds while he still could because AIDS wastes away the body. Also, he had to avoid such foods as sushi and soft, runny cheeses — such as brie. This upset Mr. Feinberg. He complained to a friend named John Palmer Weir, Jr., “How can I be a card-carrying homo without brie?” Mr. Weir pointed out, “There’s still quiche. We’ll always have quiche.”

• Arturo Toscanini and Carla, his wife, once visited the home of Arthur O’Connell. Mrs. Toscanini, always a curious sort, went into the kitchen to investigate a huge pot of spaghetti. The Italian cook, always a sensitive sort, abandoned the kitchen to ask Mr. O’Connell who “that woman” was. Fortunately, the cook was pleased to learn that “that woman” was Mrs. Toscanini, and fortunately, the spaghetti was excellent and enjoyed by all.

• While in Paris, Robert Benchley told some friends that he had once had some memorable pressed duck in a restaurant in Montmartre, so they all set off for the restaurant. Unfortunately, after everyone had ordered and been served the pressed duck, Mr. Benchley recalled why the pressed duck was so memorable — it was the worst he had ever tried to eat.

• During Lent, many Christians give up something they like as a sign of penitence. One small boy gave up ice cream — “all except chocolate.”

Games and Contests

• Young people’s novelist William Sleator grew up in a family of oddballs. When William was a young boy, his father, his younger sister Vicky, and he used to play a game. His father would blindfold them, drive them to a part of the city that William and Vicky had never been before, then drop them off and let them find their way back home. Of course, William and Vicky did have enough money to call home in case they ran into trouble finding their way back. The only time they used the telephone money was when two of their friends came along to play the game and panicked. Then William and Vicky let their friends use the money to call their home. Unfortunately, since the two friends didn’t know where they were in the city, they also panicked their parents, who called Mr. Sleator. Mr. Sleator calmly finished his lunch, which he had just started eating, then drove off and found the children within 10 minutes. Meanwhile, the friends’ parents called the police, and both parents left the house to look for the children. Mr. Sleator did not know the police had been called, and he could not contact the friends’ parents, since they had both left home. (This was in the days before cell phones.) Perhaps understandably, the friends thereafter did not visit the Sleators.

• When Marvel Comics maven Stan Lee was fifteen years old, he started entering a news contest run by the New York Herald-Tribune. Contestants were supposed to write in 500 words or fewer their pick for the top news story of the week. Mr. Lee entered the contest three times in a row, he won three times in a row, and the editor of the Herald-Tribune wrote him, saying to stop entering the contest so someone else could win for a change.

Gifts

• When soprano Beverly Sells was a girl, she sang on Major Bowes’ radio broadcasts. During one broadcast, Major Bowes said that he had given young Beverly a gift for good luck: a small figurine of an elephant. In the days following, Beverly received through the mail gifts of hundreds of small figurines of elephants. Beverly was intelligent. She mentioned on the air that she was upset because her mother wouldn’t let her have long dresses. Sure enough, dozens of gifts of long dresses arrived in the mail for Beverly. She continued to con the audience by mentioning occasionally that she liked such items as Mickey Mouse watches and sleds.

• When children’s book author Sid Fleischman started going bald, his kids made him a hairpiece — they clipped hair from the family pet dog and glued it to fabric. Mr. Fleischman writes in his autobiography, The Abracadabra Kid, that he was very happy with the gift — “It gave me a punk pompadour decades before spiked hairdos became trendy.”

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Neighborhoods — Fathers, Food

Fathers

• Burt Strug met his future wife, Melanie, one summer. Within one month he had convinced her to transfer to his college — and within three months he had convinced her to marry him. Today, he tells their daughter, elite gymnast Kerri Strug, “If you ever do something that dumb for a boy, I’ll strangle you.”

• Tito Fuentes, a major-league infielder, disliked knock-down pitches for what may — or may not — be a very good reason: “They shouldn’t throw at me. I’m the father of five or six kids.”

Food

• William M. Gaines, the publisher of MAD magazine, loved food — and lots of it. One day, he treated the staff to a meal at the Gotham Bar and Grill, and when he ordered, he ordered LOTS of food. In fact, the number of entrees ordered at a MAD dinner usually numbered twice the number of diners. For one thing, Mr. Gaines would order a few entrees for himself only, as well as a few that were simply placed on the table so that anyone could help himself if he were so inclined. On this occasion, he and his staff ordered so many appetizers, entrees, desserts, and wines that a waitress appeared on an errand from the kitchen. “The chef sent me out,” she said. “He wants to know, Who are you?” On one occasion, the wait staff brought over an additional table — not for extra diners, but simply to have room for all the food and drink that had been ordered. (This occasion turned into a four-hour feeding frenzy.) MAD writer Dick DeBartolo was a dessert freak, and at his first meal with Mr. Gaines, he told him that he always looked at the dessert menu first, so he would know whether to order a heavy or a light entree. Mr. Gaines said to order whatever he wanted for the entree and let him take care of dessert. When it was time for dessert, Mr. Gaines ordered one of every choice, so the waiter brought over an entire dessert cart and left it.

• When figure skater Sasha Cohen was a little girl, her parents would not let her eat junk food at home, so she had to get spoiled at her grandparents’ house. She remembers her grandmother’s brand of discipline: “Sasha, you cannot have ice cream if you do not finish your doughnut first!” Sasha was a lover of ice cream, even at age 5, so she loved her grandmother’s other strict rule: No child is allowed to eat ice cream more than three times per day. Her parents would sometimes indulge her with a kid’s ice cream cone away from the house, and Sasha remembers once requesting of the salesperson, “Please make my kid’s cone extra large.” He thought that this was funny, and so the scoop that he gave her was huge. She once ordered ice cream in a cup at a restaurant, but the server forgot to bring her a spoon. No problem. Young Sasha knew that spoons were located in a big container nearby, so she went to the container, which was high above her head, and she started pulling on it. Soon, the container and lots of silverware tumbled noisily to the ground. Everyone in the restaurant grew quiet, but little Sasha triumphantly held a spoon up and announced, “I got it!” The people in the restaurant applauded.

• Queen Kaahumanu was the first feminist of Hawaii. When she was born, women on the islands had to live by many rules. For example, women were not allowed to eat with the men, and women were not allowed to eat bananas, or pork, or coconuts, or baked dog. However, when her husband, King Kamehameda, died, Queen Kaahumanu decided to make a few changes. First, she became the joint ruler of the islands, along with Liholiho, her husband’s son by another wife. Then she and Liholiho’s mother started to change society by doing such things as eating bananas in front of the new king. The new king was open to the changes, and soon, the new king started eating at the same table with them. The Hawaiian people also welcomed the changes and made great changes in their way of living, including destroying many wooden idols.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Neighborhoods — Fathers

Fathers

• Elite gymnast Kerri Strug was badly injured at a meet at which her father was present. Someone told her father, “Dr. Strug, don’t worry. She’ll be fine for the U.S. Championships.” Dr. Strug got mad and replied, “I don’t care about any gymnastics meet or anything but Kerri right now. I don’t care if she ever walks into a gym again. I want to know if she’s ever going to be able to walk. I want to know if she’s ever going to be able to have children and hold her children in her arms.” Fortunately, Ms. Strug did recover with no ill effects — and she won a team gold medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

• Bob Newhart was a family man as well as a comedian and a comic actor. While making The Bob Newhart Show,he owned a very large watch instead of one of the small digital watches that were then becoming popular. When Oliver Clark, who played Mr. Herd on the sitcom, asked why he had bought such a large watch, Mr. Newhart replied that around 3 or 4 p.m. he would take a look at his watch, very obviously and very significantly, to let the people around him know that he was ready to go home and see his children. For that particular purpose, he needed a big watch.

• After lesbian comedian Kate Clinton came out to her father (he was good about it — he told her that he wanted her to be happy, to be safe, and to get health insurance), she invited him to dinner with her and some of her lesbian friends. No topics for discussion were off limits, except for one. For her own comfort, she told her friends not to talk about sex. Near the end of the meal, one of her friends asked her father, “Well, Mr. Clinton, what do you think we as gay people can do to make more bridges to straight people?” Her father replied, “Keep talking.”

• Financial writer Andrew Tobias knows two very intelligent gay parents. One father is American; the other father is French. That means that their two daughters are growing up bilingual in English and French. In addition, their housekeeper is Spanish and the only TV the two daughters were allowed to watch when they were younger was Spanish-language Disney tapes. The result: the girls are trilingual. By the way, the two girls were shocked when they visited a young friend. They came home and shouted, “Daddy! Papa! Penelope’s TV speaks English!”

• Golfer Peter Jacobsen’s voice was used in the game Golden Tee Golf, which was very popular in bars. One day, Mr. Jacobsen’s two daughters, Kristen and Amy, were in a bar. Both were college students, both were underage, and both were using fake IDs to buy alcohol. Suddenly, they heard their father’s voice saying, “It’s great to be here.” “Oh, my God!” Amy said. “Kristen, Dad’s here!” Both daughters ducked under the bar table, hoping that their father had not seen them, then discovered that they were sitting next to a Golden Tee game.

• Christy Hauptman started skydiving as a teenager, but she had a rocky — and terrified — start. Her father took her up in an airplane, and she was supposed to jump out at 15,000 feet. Instead, she started cursing and screamed at her father, “There’s no way I’m stepping out of this plane! I’ll die if I do!” (Many expletives have been deleted from that quotation.) This was the first time she had ever cursed that much — especially in front of her father. However, she decided to jump, she enjoyed it, and she has jumped hundreds of times since then.

• When Makeda Zook was in the third grade, a class project was to make a Father’s Day card. However, young Makeda had two lesbian mothers — her father was a sperm donor. Knowing this, her teacher asked her for which male in her life she would like to make a Father’s Day card. The choice was difficult — she could make a Father’s Day card for either her late grandfather, or for her guinea pig, which was a male. In the end, the card was gifted to Chocolate the guinea pig.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Neighborhoods — Education

Education

• Danny, the computer scientist brother of young people’s author William Sleator, had a hard time learning to read when he was a young child. One day, he went with his father to his father’s lab. Left alone for a short time, he studied a fire alarm on the wall and deciphered the word PULL. Having deciphered the word, he then followed the instructions and pulled, setting off the fire alarm. His father was not upset; instead, he was happy that Danny was finally showing signs that he was not illiterate.

• The grandmother of young adult author Chris Crutcher used to tell him a story about when his father was a boy. In the sixth grade, he came home and told her, “A lot of the other kids in my class think I’m arrogant.” She told him that he could change the other kids’ opinion of him by doing such things as not answering every question the teacher asked and letting the other kids have a chance to answer a few questions. Chris’ father thought for a moment, then said, “Naw, I’d rather be arrogant.”

• The pupils of a teacher wished to drive evil from the world, so they asked him how to do that. The teacher took his pupils to a dark basement and told them that they would drive the darkness from the basement. First, the teacher told his pupils to use sticks to beat the darkness out of the basement, but that didn’t work. Next, the teacher told his pupils to shout at and curse the darkness to drive it out of the basement, but that didn’t work. Finally, the teacher told his pupils to light a candle.

• Many students are afraid of being made uncomfortable in the classroom because of exposure to beliefs that are different from their own. Writer Anna Quindlen once asked Elizabeth Castelli, a professor of religion at Barnard College, if she did anything to keep her students from feeling uncomfortable in the classroom. She replied, “It is not my job to make people comfortable. It is [my job] to educate them.” Ms. Quindlen wrote that when she heard this, “I nearly stood up and cheered.”

• Following the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center, many Americans wanted revenge. A week after the attack, Dean Dorothy Denburg of Barnard College saw many people wearing Barnard College T-shirts on Fifth Avenue in New York passing out leaflets that called for tolerance toward people of all religions and all backgrounds. This took courage as many, many people, including high-ranking American politicians, wanted war, even against a country that had nothing to do with 9-11.

• Not everyone supports giving honorary degrees to celebrities, including royal celebrities. In 1986, Monash University gave Prince Philip an honorary science degree. To protest, the Monash Association of Students gave their own honorary degree — to a 21-month-old Chihuahua. Some people thought the Chihuahua deserved the honorary degree as much as the prince did. Other people disagree, saying that the Chihuahua deserved the honorary degree more than the prince did.

• At times, students become excited by learning. During Spring Quarter of 1970, Ohio University professor Robert DeMott offered a course titled “Writers of the Beat Movement.” The course drew so many students that there was standing room only, with many students spilling out of the classroom and into the hallway. Later in 1970, he taught an Honors course on beat poet Gary Snyder — the class met in a teepee on property owned by an Ohio University art professor.

• Many books for young people have been censored or challenged, although defenders of free speech have often stood up to the would-be censors. For example, a librarian in the New York City school system threatened to quit if Paul Zindel’s novel The Pigman were placed in the library. Her supervisors told her to quit — if students wanted to read The Pigman, they could.

• Actor Will Smith’s father was strongly against illegal drugs. When Will was a teenager, his father drove him around the poorer sections of Philadelphia, showing him bums with nowhere to sleep but doorways. He told Will, “This is what people look like when they do drugs.” Will says, “I never tried drugs because I felt he would kill me. Literally.”

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