THE FUNNIEST PEOPLE IN NEIGHBORHOODS: 250 ANECDOTES
By David Bruce
Copyright 2010 by Bruce D. Bruce
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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The Funniest People in Neighborhoods
Chapter 1: From Alcohol to Couples
Alcohol
• During a long-distance telephone call, choreographer Agnes de Mille told her soldier husband, Walter Prude, that she was pregnant: “We’re having a baby!” He managed to say, “Good God, are you sure!” before they were disconnected—telephone service during World War II was not as good as it is today. Twenty-five minutes later, they were reconnected, and Agnes asked, “Are you all right? Have you something to drink?” Walter replied, “A bottle of Scotch. I’m well along in it.”
• Before they were married, Fred and Joanne Rogers (TV’s Mister Rogers and his significant other) went to many dances and parties, and they once won a bottle of champagne for their costumes when they went as Raggedy Ann and Andy. Because they were teetotalers, they did not drink it, but instead went around pouring it at various tables for their friends.
Animals
• A few months after African-American contralto Marian Anderson had been prevented from singing at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., because of her race, Pierre Monteux and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra were scheduled to perform there. Doris, Pierre’s wife, arrived, along with Fifi, their pet dog. Unfortunately, three stern-looking men stopped Doris, telling her that under no circumstances could she enter Constitution Hall with “that dog.” A friend of Doris, Hilda Davis, told the stern-looking men, “Without a doubt we cannot enter because the dog, as you call her, is BLACK.” As Ms. Davis and the stern-looking men argued, Doris and Fifi made their way into Constitution Hall, where they enjoyed the concert.
• 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; however, her time at sea was memorable mainly for good reasons. 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.
• Marion Dane Bauer, author of the 1987 Newbery Honor Book titled On My Honor, has trained herself to be observant of behavior, including animal behavior. For example, she watched Popcorn, her pet dog, looking at snow. Popcorn first looked outside the kitchen window and watched snow falling. Then Popcorn looked down the hallway and through the dining-room glass doors and watched snow falling. Then Popcorn looked up at the ceiling. Clearly, Popcorn was wondering why white stuff was falling in front of the house and in back of the house but not in the house.
• When she was in the first grade, children’s book author Lois Lowry found what she thought was a very cold mouse. (Actually, it was a dead rat, but she didn’t understand such things yet.) Hoping to warm up the “mouse” and keep it as a pet, she took it home, put it in the oven, and turned the oven on to a low temperature. Then she started playing and forgot about her new pet. Her mother noticed that something was being baked in the oven, and she checked it out—then, Lois says, her mother started screaming at her for no reason.
• Even a dog can be a critic. Famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed a number of mansions, but he also designed a number of modest houses. After schoolteacher Robert Berger built his own house using Mr. Wright’s design, his 12-year-old son wrote Mr. Wright asking him to design a matching doghouse. Mr. Wright did exactly that, and Mr. Berger and his son built the doghouse. However, Eddie, their Labrador retriever, apparently did not like the doghouse and so never went into it.
• In 1924, Pep, a black Labrador retriever, killed a cat that belonged to the governor of Pennsylvania. The governor was not pleased. Because he was a judge, he decided to hold a trial for Pep. He found Pep guilty, and Pep was sent to prison for life. However, Pep was happy in prison. He was allowed to run free as he pleased, and he accompanied the prisoners on their work details. Pep liked the prisoners, and the prisoners liked Pep. When Pep finally died, prisoners wept.
• In his book Faith, Hope, and Hilarity, Dick Van Dyke tells a story about a boy who prayed to God to bring him a puppy. Unfortunately, his mother was allergic to dogs and so she got him a kitten instead. The boy told his mother, “I thought you said that God is perfect and never makes mistakes.” “That’s true,” his mother said. “Well, you’re wrong,” her son said. “I prayed real hard for a puppy and anyone can see that this is a kitten.”
• At a Westminster Dog Show in Madison Square Garden, a woman was selling an expensive coat made for dogs. Saying “We want her dog to look as smart as madame,” the saleslady held up a pink cocktail coat made out of embroidered silk with a lining of mohair. Sportswriter Robert Lipsyte asked her, “When would a dog wear that?” The saleslady replied, “After five o’clock.”
• When opera singer Joan Hammond returned to Australia for a visit, two of her nieces asked for her autograph—in fact, they each gave her a piece of paper and asked that she sign each piece of paper ten times. When she had finished, they said, “Goody! Now we can swap these for twenty tadpoles!”
Art
• Shortly after Vincent van Gogh died, Theo, his brother, followed him in death. Nearly everyone thought that Vincent had been a failure as an artist, and Theo’s widow, Jo, was urged by her brother to throw away Vincent’s paintings and other works of art. She declined to do that. Instead, she preserved Vincent’s works of art and the letters that he and Theo had written to each other over the years. She organized exhibitions, wrote a biography of Vincent, and arranged for the publication of the letters. Without her efforts, many soon-to-be-recognized-as-masterpieces works of art would have perished.
• In 1962, sculptor Louise Nevelson traveled to Italy to represent the United States in the Biennale Internazionale d’Arte in Venice. Unfortunately, her trousseau turned up missing, and the airline officials had little interest in locating it for her. Of course, she did not want to wear her traveling clothes at such an important competition. Therefore, she lied to the airline official, “I’m getting married tomorrow, and I’ve got to have my trousseau. My white wedding dress is in it!” The airline official started making telephone calls and soon the trousseau was located for the 62-year-old “bride.”
• Vincent van Gogh once gave a painting to a friend named Anton Kerssemakers, who pointed out that he hadn’t signed the painting. Mr. van Gogh replied, “Actually, it isn’t necessary—they will surely recognize my work later on and write about me when I am dead and gone.”
• Pop artist Andy Warhol was a cat person. He and his mother kept a couple of dozen cats in the apartment they shared together. All of the cats were named Sam.
Babies
• When children’s book author Tomie DePaola was in kindergarten, his parents brought home a baby sister for him. At the baby’s baptism, little Tomie saw the priest pour water on his baby sister’s head, and so he wanted water poured on his head. Hearing him, the priest promised, “Little boy, if you’re quiet you can have anything you want after the ceremony.” Knowing little Tomie, his dad said, “Big mistake, Father.” Tomie was quiet, and when the priest asked what he wanted after the ceremony, Tomie said, “Baby Jesus,” by which he meant the baby Jesus in the church’s nativity scene. Of course, Tomie couldn’t have that particular baby Jesus, but his parents bought him another one at Woolworth’s.
• When a family had a baby, their young son insisted on having a private time with the new baby. Of course, the parents were afraid that their young son was jealous of the new baby and might try to hurt it, so they unobtrusively hid and watched their young son as he was “alone” with the new baby. However, the boy did not try to hurt the baby. All he did was request, “Tell me what it was like. I’m beginning to forget.”
• Jimmy Piersall was a Red Sox outfielder who had 10 children and was intimately familiar with changing diapers, so he had the perfect qualifications to teach Yankee catcher Yogi Berra how to diaper a child: “Yog, you take a diaper and put it in the shape of a baseball diamond. Take the baby’s bottom and put it on the pitcher’s mound. Take first base and pin it to third. Take home and slide it to second.”
Birth
• Marty Links was a woman who created a comic strip titled Bobby Sox about a teenager. She was a member of the National Cartoonists Society, and after giving birth to her first child, she mailed the members of the NCS an announcement, so she was somewhat annoyed when they kept sending her mail addressed to Mr. Links. (She even considered sending them her measurements in an attempt to get them to get her sex right.)
• In 1969, New York Met Ron Swoboda became a proud father. The birth occurred back home in New York at 1 a.m. at the same time that Mr. Swoboda was playing an away game in Los Angeles at 10 p.m. due to the three-hour time difference on the coasts. On the scoreboard flashed this message: “Congratulations, Ron Swoboda. Your new son was born tomorrow morning.”
Birthdays
• William C. McVeigh and his wife, Ruth, live in Fountain Hills, Arizona, where they had 14 children. Three of their children, Robert, Charles, and James, were born on December 4, but in different years. As the boys were growing up, each year on their birthday the family would bring a birthday cake, sing “Happy Birthday” to Bobby, then take four candles off the cake and sing “Happy Birthday” to Charlie, and finally take three more candles off the cake and sing “Happy Birthday” to Jimmy.
• When Yoshiko Uchida, author of Journey to Topaz, was a little girl, her grandmother celebrated her 88th birthday. Little Yoshiko worried about how her grandmother would blow out all those candles on her birthday cake, but when the time came, her grandmother simply took a fan and with one sweep of her arm blew out all the candles. (Her grandmother was always prepared. In her closet was a very nice black dress. Pinned on it was this note: “This one is for my trip to Heaven.”)
Books
• When children’s mystery writer Joan Lowery Nixon was a little girl, she found a stack of magazines—with such titles as True Confessions, True Love, and Modern Romances—in a box under her grandmother’s bed. Being an avid reader, she avidly began to read. That night, at supper, she asked her parents the meanings of a few words she had read in the magazines but had not understood. Surprised, her parents asked her where she had come across such words, and the story of the box of magazines came out. Her grandfather, a self-educated lover of the classics, blamed himself for not educating the mind of his wife, and announced that he would read to her that night a story from The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights. The reading did not go well. He started to read “The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad,” but when he read out loud that one of the three ladies had breasts “like two pomegranates of even size,” his wife was outraged. She stormed, “Twin pomegranates! Oh, how rude! There is nothing that vulgar in my magazines!” And so Ms. Nixon’s grandmother’s education in the classics came to an end.
• Jean Little, the author of Little by Little, once read The Secret Garden to some children she was babysitting. The girls seemed very interested in the book, so she read a couple of extra chapters, but the boy looked bored. However, after Ms. Little had finished reading, the boy wanted to use the telephone. Given permission, he called his mother and said in an excited tone, “Mum, they got into the garden!” Ms. Little learned from this experience: “Never again did I make the mistake of thinking that a child who appeared inattentive was getting nothing out of a book.”
Children
• Determined to found a new community, a king selected a site and then consulted his astrologers. The astrologers read the stars and planets, concluding that the site was good—if a child would be entombed alive within the walls of the community. Therefore, a mother was forced to “volunteer” her child to be entombed alive. However, the mother’s child was very intelligent, and he told the king, “Let me ask your astrologers three questions. If the astrologers answer the questions correctly, then we will know that they can truly read the stars and planets, and I will willingly be entombed alive. However, if they answer wrongly, then we will know that they wrongly read the stars and planets, and no one should be entombed alive.” The king agreed to the child’s request, and the child asked the astrologers these questions: “What is the lightest thing in the world? What is the sweetest thing in the world? And what is the heaviest thing in the world?” The astrologers consulted among themselves for three days, then told their answers to the three questions: “The lightest thing in the world is a feather, the sweetest thing in the world is honey, and the heaviest thing in the world is stone.” The child laughed and said, “The lightest thing in the world is an only child in its mother’s arms—the child is never heavy. The sweetest thing in the world is the mother’s milk to the baby. And the heaviest thing in the world is for a mother to be forced to ‘volunteer’ her child to be entombed alive.” The astrologers recognized that the child’s answers were correct, so they told the king that they had misread the stars and planets, and no one was entombed alive.
• When he was a child, Daniel Keyes, author of “Flowers for Algernon,” played at his mother’s beauty shop—their apartment was on the floor above. One day, a mother and her very young daughter came in, and as the mother was getting her hair done, her daughter kept crying. Young Danny tried to play with her, but nothing stopped her crying. Finally, he went upstairs, got an armload of books, and started “reading” one of the books to the young girl, who stopped crying as he said, “Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess ….” The girl’s mother was impressed and thought that young Danny could read, even though he was only three and a half years old. She even thought that he was a genius! But of course, there was a trick—his mother had read the books so many times to him that he had memorized them. Later, after Daniel was still very young but had learned how to read, his father ran a junk salvage operation. Sometimes Daniel’s father took him to the junk shop, where he was fascinated by Book Mountain—a huge pile of books that were to be baled, then pulped to make cheap paper. One of Daniel’s treats was to climb Book Mountain, look over the books to see which were worth saving, and take home with him six or seven books to read.
• When she was very little, Sarah Hughes, the gold-winning medalist in women’s figure skating at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, was unwilling to be left behind with a sitter while her mother and older siblings went to interesting places—such as the ice skating rink. If she ever thought that she might be left behind with a sitter, she would dress herself and wait by the door. Eventually, her mother and older siblings would show up and be forced to take little Sarah with them. Being so motivated to skate helped three-year-old Sarah learn things—such as how to tie her shoes. On an early trip to the rink, her mother tied Sarah’s ice skates first, and little Sarah jumped up and ran to the rink, with her mother—who was pregnant—vainly trying to catch up to her. On the next trip to the rink, her mother thought that she would tie Sarah’s ice skates last; that way, Sarah would be forced to wait until her mother could keep an eye on her. It didn’t work. Sarah pulled the laces tight, then concentrated. She figured out how to tie her ice skates, jumped up, and ran to the rink.
• When he was three years old, children’s book author Tomie dePaola attended the birthday party of Buddy, his older brother. For this party, their mother wanted to have a Tiny Tot Wedding, complete with a little groom and a littler bride. However, Buddy didn’t want to be the groom, and since it was his birthday, his mother said that he didn’t have to and she would ask another boy to be the groom. Unfortunately, Buddy got the other boys to say that they didn’t want to be the groom, either. That left young Tomie, who said that he was too short to be the groom—since he was only three years old, that was true. Nevertheless, Buddy and Tomie’s mother was resourceful. Carol Crane, the tallest girl at the party, made a wonderful groom, and standing beside her was a shorter bride. A woman asked Buddy who the pretty little bride was, and he replied, “That bride is my brother.”
• When children’s book author Judy Blume was growing up, she was very much into reading and loved the library. (She even imitated the librarians by pasting card pockets inside the back covers of her personal copies of books.) Her parents encouraged her to read, although her mother told her that she had to be older to read John O’Hara’s A Rage to Live. When Judy was older and a junior in high school, she was delighted to find out that she had to read a book—any book—by John O’Hara, and she marched to the library to borrow A Rage to Live. Unfortunately, the librarian told her that A Rage to Live was on a restricted shelf and so Judy would have to have her mother’s written permission to borrow the book. Judy complained to her family, and her aunt lent her a copy of the book. Judy read it, then she read everything else she could find by Mr. O’Hara.
• A man once made a will saying that his son would not be able to inherit his wealth until he had become a fool. Such a will was puzzling, and Rabbi Jose and Rabbi Judah decided to consult Rabbi Joshua about it. When Rabbi Jose and Rabbi Judah arrived at the house of Rabbi Joshua, they discovered that Rabbi Joshua was letting his young son climb onto his back and ride on top of him as they played Horsie together. When Rabbi Joshua learned why they had come, he said that the will was not difficult to understand. When a man has children, he is allowed to act foolishly—just like Rabbi Joshua had done while playing Horsie with his son. Therefore, the will was simply saying that the dead man’s son could not inherit the dead man’s property until the son had children of his own.
• As a little girl, author Beth Lisick suffered an accident in which she became a bloody mess after a butcher knife accidentally flew out of her brother’s hand and struck her in the corner of her eye. Blood flowed freely, and her mother took her to the emergency room and got her stitched up, then took her home. However, Beth had a weird sense of humor, so she snuck out of her house instead of taking a bath, and caked with blood, she rang the doorbell of her best friend, Amy, and scared her best friend’s mother by looking psychotic, raising a knife (which she had “borrowed” without permission) in a menacing way, and asking, “Can Amy come out to play?” By the way, when a boy teased Amy, who had buck teeth, by giving her the nickname “Buck Tooth Beaver,” Beth stood up for her friend by kicking the boy in a place that earned her a special nickname: The Nutcracker.
• The children of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright were entirely normal. As teenagers, his daughters used to sit by the fireplace and hold hands with their boyfriends. Their younger brothers used to sneak up on them and throw wadded-up paper at them. Mr. Wright used a very large room as a bedroom for all of his children. The bedroom had a low partition in the middle, and the girls slept on one side of the partition, while the boys slept on the other side. When the girls had a slumber party, the boys threw pillows at them over the low partition. And when Mr. Wright built a studio onto his house so he could work at home with his employees, his children would sneak onto a balcony overlooking the studio and throw things at their father’s draftsmen.
• The oldest child of children’s book author Lois Lowry is Alix, who attended nursery school when she was almost five years old. While picking up Alix one day, Lois carried her youngest child, a newborn named Ben. Alix’s teacher was surprised to see Ben, saying, “I didn’t know Alix had a baby brother. When we talked about families at Circle Time, she told us she was the only child in the family.” Then she said that of course Ben was a newborn, so Alix had been a single child when she spoke about her family. Actually, Alix had not been a single child then, for two other children were between Alix and Ben. But Alix wanted to be the only child—the center of attention—and for a while in nursery school, she was.
• Christian writer Dale Hanson Bourke became concerned when a four-year-old bully named Brian hit her four-year-old son, named Chase, in the playground. She had been hearing from her son that Brian had been doing bad things, so she advised, “If he ever does that to you again, just hit him right back!” Chase, however, was unwilling: “But, Mom, that might make him cry.” This comment helped Ms. Bourke to calm down. A few days later she learned that young Brian’s parents were involved in a messy divorce case, contributing to his bad behavior, and so she and her son prayed for Brian. Because of the seriousness of the situation, young Chase prayed first to Jesus, and then to God.
• When Yoshiko Uchida, author of Journey to Topaz, was a little girl growing up in California, she disliked some of the visitors to her home. After hearing of a Japanese superstition that stated to get rid of unwanted visitors you should put a cloth over the bristles of a broom then lean it upside down against a wall, she decided to try it. It worked—the unwanted visitor left quickly. However, Yoshiko’s mother was horrified by what she had done. For one thing, she had placed the broom where the visitor could see it. The Japanese-ancestry visitor realized that he was not wanted there (by Yoshiko, at least) and left.
• In 1958, the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles. This was an important event, for major-league baseball had finally arrived in the western part of the continental United States. Players and their family members were interviewed by the media, and Danny, the nine-year-old son of Dodger pitcher Carl Erskine, even made an appearance on Art Linkletter’s TV show Kids Say the Darnest Things. Mr. Linkletter asked Danny what his father did for a living, and Danny explained, “Oh, he doesn’t work—he plays for the Dodgers.” And when Mr. Linkletter asked what the letters “LA” stood for on the Dodgers baseball caps, Danny answered, “Lost Again.”
• Jerry Spinelli, author of the Newbery Award-winning young people’s novel Maniac Magee, at first wrote novels—which were unpublished—for adults. However, one evening, he packed chicken in his lunch bag, and the next day he went to the refrigerator to get his lunch. When he opened the bag, he found chicken bones. He realized that one of his children must have eaten the chicken, he thought the situation was funny, and he began to write about it from a child’s point of view. Using this scene as his initial inspiration, eventually he created his first published novel: Space Station Second Grade.
• Elizabeth, the 11-year-old daughter of pianist Rudolf Serkin, once attended one of her father’s concerts, where she ignored his playing but instead stared at the bald head of a man under the box where she was sitting. Finally, she could resist temptation no longer, so she spit directly on the bald man’s head. When her father spoke to her later, telling her that she should not to do such things, she replied, “But, Father, it was the chance of a lifetime, and I could not let it pass. I’m sure you would have done it, also.”
• When he was only five years old, Dicky, the youngest son of artist Edna Hibel, had already started a “museum” in the attic of their home. There he displayed his favorite things, such as rocks, shells, photographs, and even small paintings created by his mother and given to him occasionally when he asked her for a painting to display in his museum. Once, his mother made a sale of two small paintings, and Dicky tried to stop her from selling them by grabbing her legs and yelling, “Those are the ones I wanted.”
• When she was a small child, Joan Moore was kept inside on a rainy day, and her mother gave her some watercolor paints and paper to keep her busy. After a while, her mother heard young Joan calling, “Come see! Come see!” When she entered the room, she discovered that Joan had gotten tired of painting paper, so she had painted herself green from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Later, Joan used her energy and creativity to become a top-ranked American gymnast of the 1970s.
• As a child, American realist painter Andrew Wyeth was called “that sinister demon child” by author Joseph Hergesheimer because young Andrew tormented him by pretending that Mr. Hergesheimer was someone whom Mr. Hergesheimer detested. Young Andrew would call Mr. Hergesheimer by the other person’s name, and when Mr. Hergesheimer tried to correct him, Andrew would ask, “Isn’t that your name?” Mr. Hergesheimer would reply, “Not by fifty years and two cross-eyes.”
• When figure skater Sasha Cohen was a little girl, her misbehavior necessitated a lot of time-outs, so she was used to causing and getting into trouble. A California girl, she experienced her first earthquake while playing under the dining room table. After the earth stopped shaking, she crawled out from under the table and told her mother, “I am so sorry, Mommy. I won’t ever do that again.” Her mother explained to little Sasha that she had not caused the earthquake.
• Some young children are surprised that older adults have parents, too. Librarian Jeanette C. Smith once made friends with a 10-year-old girl who often came into the Minnesota public library where she worked. One day, Ms. Smith’s mother visited her, leaving as the 10-year-old girl arrived. The 10-year-old girl asked who the visitor had been, and when Ms. Smith explained that the visitor had been her mother, the 10-year-old girl exclaimed, “YOU HAVE A MOTHER!”
• TV and movie star Sarah Michelle Gellar got her start in TV commercials. As a very young child, she starred in a commercial for Burger King in which she criticized McDonald’s hamburgers. McDonald’s was so angered by the commercial that it sued lots of people connected with it, including five-year-old Sarah. She remembers once telling her friends, “I can’t play,” because she had to see some lawyers.
• The very young son of writer Amy Hollingsworth learned nonviolent ways of dealing with anger. One day, when he was angry at her, he drew a picture of a smiley face, then he crossed it out and slipped it under her bedroom door. Later, after she had talked with him and he was no longer angry at her, he slipped two other pictures he had drawn under her door: a smiley face and a heart.
• At age 13, ballet dancer Yvette Chauviré visited her grandmother in the country. Outside on a nice summer day, she danced, making up her own ballet. The next day, her grandmother overheard two women gossiping about young Yvette: “You didn’t see? The granddaughter of Mme. Chauviré? But that child is insane! Poor little girl, so young, and already crazy!”
• As a child, Hugh McIlhenny, aka “The King,” developed his incredible ability to run with the football. His mother used to send him to go to the store, and to get to the store, he had to go through a scary dark alley. Whenever he had to go through the alley, he ran as fast as he could to escape the dangers he thought were lurking hidden in the shadows.
• The creativity of young children can be amazing. Jean Little, the author of Little by Little, had an aunt named Ruth whose family had been too poor to buy her a doll when she was a young girl. Therefore, she had pretended that three kitchen chairs were dolls. She dressed them with rags, played with them, and even talked to them.
• Sometimes, young people don’t have their priorities set properly. In the 1940s, Ilene Beckerman used to make sure that she was wearing perfume and mascara before going to her class at Ballet Arts in the Carnegie Building in New York City—but her mother would yell at her because she had forgotten to wash her neck.
• The four-year-old daughter of a friend of writer Carol Tavris took a bath with a very young male cousin, during which she made an interesting anatomical discovery. That night, as her mother was tucking her into bed, the four-year-old girl said, “Mommy, isn’t it a blessing he doesn’t have it on his face?”
• Mikaela, the daughter of movie director Steven Spielberg, saw her father on television for the very first time in 1996 when he appeared on the Academy Awards show. Mikaela’s mother held her in front of the TV and told her, “Look, honey, there’s your daddy.” She burped.