THE FUNNIEST PEOPLE IN FAMILIES: 250 ANECDOTES

By David Bruce

Copyright 2010 by Bruce D. Bruce

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The Funniest People in Families: 250 Anecdotes

Chapter 1: From Alcohol to Couples

Alcohol

• Comedian Jay Leno doesn’t drink, smoke, or use illegal drugs. When Mavis Nicholson, who became his wife, asked for a drink early in their relationship, she almost did not become his wife. He told her, “Look, let me give you the money, and you can buy a blouse or something. I don’t want to buy you a drink.” With the $35 he gave her, she bought a blouse. (Mavis says, “I can’t begin to tell you how absolutely peculiar I thought that was.”)

• Olivia Pound’s father was a Nebraska judge in the 19^th century. One day, a lawyer who was also an alcoholic attempted to argue a case before him, even though the lawyer was obviously inebriated. The judge listened for a few minutes, then banged his gavel and ruled, “This case is postponed for two weeks. The lawyer is trying to practice before two bars at the same time. It can’t be done.”

Animals

• When Darci Kistler, a ballerina for the New York City Ballet, was growing up, her family had a pet alligator named Iggy. One day, Iggy got loose and made his way into the family swimming pool, where the family had a terrible time trying to catch him. Every time a family member tried to catch Iggy with a net, Iggy crushed the net in his jaws. Darci was relieved when Iggy was finally captured and returned to the pet store—she had noticed Iggy eying the family’s dog and cat in a suspiciously hungry manner. Other family pets included snakes—once a boa constrictor was loose in the Kistler family house for a week.

• On his TV show House Party, Art Linkletter interviewed a little girl whose fish had recently died. He asked whether the fish had gone to fish heaven, but the little girl replied, “No, I threw him down the toilet.”

Automobiles

• As a child, future Secretary of State Madeleine Albright traveled with her family as they moved to Denver, Colorado—a city that is known as the “Mile-High City” because it is one mile above sea level. Approaching the city, young Madeleine waited for the road to steeply climb one mile skyward, not realizing that the car had been gradually climbing higher for a long time.

• Comedian Jay Leno really, really likes cars and motorcycles. In fact, his garage looks like a warehouse because it is so filled with his vehicular possessions. Still, whenever his mother visited him and wanted to borrow a car, he would tell her, “Mother, I’ll rent you a car.”

Birth

• When Erma Bombeck’s first book, At Wit’s End, was published, she went on tour to publicize it. At one book signing, she spent three hours in a department store with a stack of her books on the desk at which she was sitting, but only two people approached her: A woman wanted directions to the ladies room, and a man asked her the price of the desk. Later, after she had written several best sellers, the lines of people waiting to have her autograph a book became very long. Once, a woman with an infant waited in line to have Ms. Bombeck sign a book. When Ms. Bombeck said that the infant was adorable, the woman replied, “Thank you. It was born in the line.”

• When comedian Henry Morgan was five years old, he was taken to a hospital where his mother was having a baby. He walked into her room, pointed to her stomach, and said, “I can see the baby.” However, his mother smiled and said, “I’ve already had the baby.” In his autobiography, Mr. Morgan writes, “This gift of saying the right thing at the right time has been with me all my life.”

• Entertainer Art Linkletter’s daughter, Sharon, was giving birth. Because her physician knew her only by her married name, he was shocked when Mr. Linkletter showed up at the hospital. He told Sharon, “Guess who’s waiting to see you on the other side of those doors—Art Linkletter!” Sharon shocked him further by saying, “Why shouldn’t he be here? He’s my father.”

• The most comedian Eddie Cantor ever laughed was in response to a line by Amanda, his four-year-old granddaughter. Mr. Cantor was in the hospital for minor surgery, and Amanda was allowed to see him as long as she was a good girl. At the end of the visit, Amanda asked, “Wasn’t I a good girl, Grandpa?” Then she added, “So now may I see the baby?”

• While Eve Arden, famous especially for her radio and TV lead character in Our Miss Brooks, was having labor pains for her son (Douglas), she ran into one small problem—nurses in the pre-labor room kept asking her for her autograph.

Birthdays

• Carmine Buete was a 10-year-old boy with AIDS who lived near New York City. He caught AIDS from his mother, who died when he was a year and three months old—he was so young when his mother died that he couldn’t remember her. Still, whenever the wind blew open the door of his home, he would say that it was his mother. On his mother’s birthday, he used to send her a helium-filled balloon by standing on a porch, releasing the balloon, and letting it soar into the sky. After Carmine died on July 13, 1996, his family started sending balloons to him on his birthday.

• Comedian and announcer Henry Morgan is married to an intelligent woman. On one of his birthdays, an old friend of Henry’s called him on the telephone to talk over old times. Throughout the rest of the day at half-hour intervals, more old friends of Henry’s kept calling him. He found out later that his wife, Karen, had spent a week tracking down his old friends and assigning them a time to call.

• Humorist Frank Sullivan enjoyed birthdays very much, but he enjoyed even more making jokes at his friends’ expense. A friend who sent him a congratulatory telegram sometimes received a telegram like this in reply: “Your telegram on my birthday today will suffice until you can find time to send me some more substantial gift. Thanking you in advance, Mr. Sullivan.”

Books

• An 8^th-grade student didn’t read a book for her book report, but instead made up a book and completely invented the plot and characters while telling her teacher that she had bought the book at a bookstore and had left it at home and therefore couldn’t remember such things as its publisher and copyright. The student received a good grade on the book report, but the teacher wrote a note on her report, asking where he could buy a copy of the book as a present for his niece. The student was so unnerved by the teacher’s note that she never cheated again.

• Reading can educate people. Author Walter Dean Myers once received a letter from a teenager who had been watching television coverage of the Persian Gulf War and was so excited that he could hardly wait to turn 17 so he could join the Army and fight in a war. However, after reading Mr. Myers’ Fallen Angels , a realistic war book, he decided that he did not want to fight after all. Fallen Angels was a tribute to Mr. Myers’ younger brother, Sonny, who died two days after being sent to Vietnam.

• Author Judy Blume loved books even when she was a little girl. In fact, she loved the picture book Madeline so much that after borrowing it from a library, she didn’t want to return it. Instead, she hid the book and then told her mother that she had lost it.

Brothers

• Two brothers, one of whom was married and the other single, farmed the same land together, and they split the harvest equally. The brother who was single felt that the brother who was married should have more of the harvest, so he would secretly take sacks of grain from his storehouse and put them in the married brother’s storehouse. However, the brother who was married worried that the brother who was single was lonely, and in order to allow his brother to buy nice things for himself, he would secretly take sacks of grain from his storehouse and put them in the single brother’s storehouse. Year after year, both brothers received an equal number of sacks of grain, and neither understood why.

• When he was growing up, Cordell Brown and Phil, his brother, played their own version of dodge ball—instead of throwing a ball, Phil threw very ripe peaches at Cordell. Because Cordell had cerebral palsy, he seldom got out of the way of the peaches, so he became a mess very quickly. Today, they laugh when they recall those games. (Cordell is a wonderful man who has founded a summer camp called Camp Echoing Hills and several residential homes for handicapped adults in Ohio.)

• At a trial, the prosecutor tried to get Wilson Mizner to admit that he was covering up in order to save his brother, Addison. The prosecutor asked Wilson, who was on the witness stand, “You love your brother, don’t you? You have a great affection for him, don’t you?” Unfortunately for the prosecutor, Wilson had lots of experience on the witness stand. He replied, “I have a vague regard for him.”

Chanukah

• On Chanukah, parents customarily give gifts, such as coins, to their children. One Chanukah, actor Elliott Gould told his children, “Tonight, instead of money, I’m going to give you total honesty and truth, which is more important.” Molly, his daughter, replied, “But you give us that every night.”

Children

• Maud Gruss was born into a French circus family, and at age three, she decided to make an unscheduled public appearance in a balancing act. A cousin named Eddy Ringenbach was performing with his sister (Isabelle), and with Maud’s brother (Armand). Eddy was lying on his back, using his legs to support a ladder, on which Isabelle and Armand were performing tricks. Suddenly, young Maud walked out, dressed in a pink tutu, climbed over Eddy, and started to climb up the ladder. The circus audience started to applaud, and Maud, hearing the applause, let go of the ladder and started to applaud, too. As she applauded, she began to fall. Isabelle and Armand immediately jumped off the ladder. Isabelle did a back flip, and Armand did a front flip. When Armand landed, he was holding Maud safely in his arms. The circus audience thought they had witnessed a perfectly performed, much-rehearsed trick, and they gave three-year-old Maud and the other performers an enormous ovation.

• When world-class women’s gymnastics coaches Bela and Marta Karolyi defected from Romania to the United States, they did not know English and had a difficult time learning it. When they brought their young daughter (Andrea) to the United States, she also did not know English, and they were worried about her. They tried a public school and a private school, but at both schools the teachers did not pay particular attention to Andrea, who sat silently. Eventually, however, Andrea picked up English on her own. Bela saw her speaking to some American kids, and he asked if she was speaking Romanian or Hungarian to them. Andrea replied, “I’m talking like everybody else.” After that experience, Bela and Marta decided that “the best teachers were the children.”

• Operatic tenor Leo Slezak knew how to get the truth from his children when they were small—all he had to do was to tell them that he would ask the Angel what had happened and the Angel would tell him. One day, his young son, Walter, refused to eat his supper. He put the food in his mouth, but he would not swallow it. He then left the room for a moment, returned, and said with a big grin, “I’ve eaten it now!” Mr. Slezak was doubtful, so he said that he would ask the Angel. Feeling cocky, Walter told him to go ahead and do just that. Mr. Slezak then said that the Angel had told him that Walter had given his food to the family dog, and Walter turned pale and stammered, “How could the Angel find that out?”

• While the Three Stooges were performing live on stage, Sandy, the five-year-old niece of Larry Fine—the balding but not bald Stooge—was in the audience, watching as the Stooges slapped each other and poked each other’s eyes. However, at one point, when Moe led a screaming Larry around the stage after sticking his finger up Larry’s nose, Sandy started yelling, “You’re hurting my Uncle Larry! You’re hurting my Uncle Larry!” Larry immediately came over to her and explained that he was only pretending to be hurt, then he rejoined the act to the loud applause of the audience. As for Moe, he was laughing so hard that it took a while for the act to continue.

• Horror writer Anne Rice got her first name from an unusual source: herself. Her name at birth was Howard Allen O’Brien. This name is unusual in itself, and she was given it in part because her father, Howard, had been bullied at school because some other children thought “Howard” sounded like a girl’s name. On the first day young Howard started attending Redemptorist School in New Orleans, a nun asked her for her name. Young Howard replied, “It’s Anne!” This name turned out to be OK with her mother, who said, “If she wants to be Anne, it’s Anne.” Anne received the rest of her adult name after she married Stan Rice.

• Early in her gymnastics career, when she was still a pre-teen, Shannon Miller attended a meet in Las Vegas, and she stayed at the Circus Circus Hotel. When she returned home, she had a lot of stuffed animals with her. Her mother asked where she had gotten them, and young Shannon joked, “Gambling.” The real story was that a man in the hotel had asked if she liked stuffed animals. She had replied, “Sure,” and he had given her a bunch of stuffed animals he had just won. (Her parents did talk to her about not accepting gifts from strangers.)

• While making a personal appearance in Chicago, TV’s Mister Rogers asked if anyone in the audience had anything they wanted to share. A small boy spoke up: “Mister Rogers, I just wear diapers at night now.” Of course, the audience wondered how Mister Rogers would react to this sharing. He replied to the boy, “Well, that’s very important, and it’s up to you when you’ll give up your diapers at night. I’m really proud of the ways you’re growing.” This made the small boy very happy and the audience breathed a sigh of relief at Mister Rogers’ answer.

• Frank Bunker Gilbreth raised a dozen children in the early 20^th century. With such a large brood, he wasn’t above getting a break on expenses now and then. Whenever he came to a toll road, he would look at the toll keeper, identify his nationality, then say, using the appropriate accent, “Do my Irishmen [or Dutchmen, or Scotsmen] come cheaper by the dozen?” Often, the reply would come back, “Irishmen, is it? And I might have known it. … The Lord Jesus didn’t mean for any family like that to pay toll on my road. Drive through on the house.”

• As a child athlete, Robin Campbell competed in many national and international track and field events, necessitating absences from home. During one long absence, she rejoiced that she had gotten out of doing the dishes, which she did each Monday when she was home. However, her family believed that children should do chores, so when Robin returned home, she discovered that she had been scheduled to wash dishes for a whole week so she could catch up to the work done by her siblings while she was away.

• Chase, the young son of Christian writer Dale Hanson Bourke, had a babysitter who had lost a leg when she was a young girl in Peru, leaving her with a wooden leg that caused her to limp. One day, Ms. Bourke saw the babysitter and young Chase walking together, and she noticed that her son was limping before he came running to her. The babysitter, Doris, explained, “He always walks that way with me.” When Ms. Bourke asked why, Doris replied, “So we can be alike.”

• While on his own as a youngster after running away from home, comedian W.C. Fields would sometimes crawl through a punched-out window into a cellar where he would sleep by a furnace. This was very good quarters for him at that time. Unfortunately, one day he discovered that the window had been fixed, probably because he had been stealing the housewife’s preserves. “The thing taught me a lesson,” he said later. “You’ve got to know where to stop.”

• When he was a 12-year-old boy living in New Concord, Ohio, astronaut John Glenn wanted to be a Boy Scout, but there was no local troop for him to join. No problem. He and his friends organized their own scouting group and called it the Ohio Rangers. They engaged in such activities as swimming upstream, hiking in snow, and sleeping outdoors in the rain. Mr. Glenn says, “We told one another we were tougher than Scouts—so tough they wouldn’t have us.”

• Lady Astor, the first woman to sit in either of the British Houses of Parliament, was once heckled by a woman who shouted, “My children are as good as yours.” Lady Astor replied, “As which of mine? I’ve got some worse than any of yours—but I might have one who is better.” Another time, a man shouted, “Your husband’s a millionaire, ain’t he?” Lady Astor replied, “I should certainly hope so—that’s why I married him.”

• The two young sons of Francis Hodgson Burnett, author of A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, supported James Garfield during his Presidential election. The boys used to hang from one of their upstairs windows and shout, “Rah for Garfield!” After he was elected, they were invited to the White House, where they rode their bicycles in the halls and knocked down Senators and other VIPs.

• When R’ Dov Ber of Mezritch was an eight-year-old boy, the home of his family burned down. His mother began to cry, and so he asked why she was crying. She replied that it wasn’t because of the house, but because the fire had destroyed a document recording the family tree, which went back to R’ Yochanan HaSandlar. The child replied, “Don’t worry, mother. I will be the start of a new family tree.”

• Groucho Marx’ young daughter, Melinda, came to him one night and asked him to tell her the bedtime story “Little Red Riding Hood.” Because Groucho was busy, he asked her if someone else could tell the story to her. But Melinda insisted that he told the story better than anyone else. When Groucho asked why, she explained, “Because you put more food in Red Riding Hood’s basket.”

• Children loved comedian Joe E. Brown. He tells about a letter written by one of the mothers of those children. Just six years old, the child saw one of Mr. Brown’s movies, then asked his mother, “Mommy, when Joe E. Brown dies, will he go to Heaven?” The child’s mother replied, “Why, of course, darling.” “Golly, Mommy,” the child said. “Won’t God laugh!”

• A friend of author Sharon Salzberg had a four-year-old son whose caregiver, to whom he was very attached, was going to move away to live with her sister and so would not be able to take care of him any more. She explained this carefully to him, and he said, “Mommy, tell me that story again but with a different ending.”

• On the First Sunday in Lent, the pastor visited a Sunday School class taught by Rolf E. Aaseng. The pastor wore his clerical vestments and spoke about why the vestments’ colors change during the year. One little girl was very impressed and later told her mother, “God came to Sunday School today!”

• A church-going young mother and her two young daughters were shopping in a health-food store when a tall, strong, white-robe-wearing elderly man with long, white hair and beard walked in. The younger daughter stared at the man until her older sister told her, “No, Regan, it’s not God.”

• The Reverend James Bence was visiting the family of the Reverend Ed Crandall when he asked Crandall’s young son, “Well, Steve, have you been a good boy lately?” Steve answered, “Yes.” The Reverend Bence then asked, “Are you good all of the time?” Young Steve answered, “Well, are you?”

• A prosthesis (an artificial limb) is a useful thing, but it can cause some strange phone calls. A mother once received this call from a camp for children with cancer: “Mrs. Anderson? Robin broke a leg on the trail. Could you please send up another one on a plane?”

• English entertainer Joyce Grenfell had an Uncle Buck who was a rolling stone. According to family lore, when his youngest child was being taught the prayer, “Our father which art in Heaven,” the child looked up and said, “Mama, where’s Papa gone now?”

• Art Linkletter used to interview very young children, and he had great success asking them what their parents had told them not to say on the show. A little girl once responded, “She told me not to announce that she was pregnant.”

• As a child, violinist Mischa Elman played Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, which includes some long pauses, before some relatives. During one of the pauses, his aunt asked, “Why don’t you play something you know, Mischa?”

• As a child, Frida Kahlo was mischievous. Sometimes, she soaped the steps near where Mexican artist Diego Rivera was working, in the hope that he would slip on the stairs and fall. When she grew up, she married Mr. Rivera.

• Country comedian Jerry Clower has children who can make him laugh. When Katy Burns, his daughter, was four, she pulled off her gloves, then called, “Daddy! Daddy! If I had one more finger, I could count to 11.”

• Ballerina Anna Pavlova was made very happy when she received a copy of a child’s essay that began, “Once I saw a fairy. Her name was Anna Pavlova.”

Christmas

• Early in the 20^th century, a custom in some parts of the United States was to tie presents to a Christmas tree at the church and have Santa Claus come to the church for a party and pass out all the presents. At one such Christmas Eve party, a little girl, the daughter of the richest and most miserly man in town, showed up for the party and the passing out of presents. (Her older brothers stayed away because they realized that their father was too stingy to put a present on the tree for them.) As the evening passed, the little girl’s name wasn’t called even once. Fortunately, Alyene Porter, the youngest daughter of the preacher, noticed what was happening. She told her mother, who re-wrapped Alyene’s present to her, a bottle of perfume, and put the little girl’s name on it, then surreptitiously hung it on the tree. When Santa Claus finally called her name, the little girl cried out, “He did call it! He did call it! I did get a present!”

• Christmases when religious writer Dale Hanson Bourke was a little girl were sometimes surprising. One Christmas the presents were placed in the shower stall. Her father explained that since their house didn’t have a fireplace, Santa Claus must have squeezed through the water pipes to come inside and leave presents. On one Christmas Eve, little Dale was allowed to choose one present to open, so she chose the biggest present. However, her parents had guessed that she would choose that present so they had filled it with nuts. Although everyone laughed, her parents knew that she was disappointed, so they let her open the rest of her presents.

• One Christmas, Pope John XXIII went to a children’s hospital to visit the patients. One child, Silvio Colagrande, had been blind, but could now see because a dying priest, Don Gnocchi, had willed his eyes to Silvio and the corneas had been transplanted. Upon seeing the Pope, Silvio called out, “I see you with Don Gnocchi’s eyes.” Another child, seven-year-old Carmine Gemma, had recently become blind as the result of an attack of meningitis. He told Pope John XXIII, “You’re the Pope, I know, but I can’t see you.” The Pope held Carmine’s hands for a while, then he murmured, “We are all blind, sometimes.”

• When poet Nikki Giovanni was a small child, her parents, Gus and Yolande, didn’t always have the money necessary to buy what their two young daughters wanted. One Christmas, their two daughters wanted bicycles, but Mr. and Mrs. Giovanni could afford to buy them only roller skates. However, they did figure out a way to make them happier about not getting bicycles although other children in the neighborhood had. They told her, “Isn’t it terrible that their parents gave them bicycles when it’s so cold? They won’t be able to ride until spring.”

• When Leo Slezak’s son (Walter) was eight years old, he wrote out a list of presents for Santa Claus to bring to him. However, the governess mentioned to Mr. Slezak that Walter didn’t believe in Santa Claus any more. When Mr. Slezak asked Walter why he had written out a list of presents for Santa Claus, little Walter replied, “I didn’t want to spoil the pleasure for you and Mommy.”

• On Christmas, Pope John XXIII (who was named Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli at his birth) sometimes visited children in a hospital. He once asked a boy what his name was. The boy replied, “Giuseppe.” Not knowing who his visitor was, the boy asked, “What’s your name?” The Pope answered, “Oh, my name is Giuseppe, too, but now everybody calls me John.”

Couples

• In the old days, William Boake wished to court Euphemia Birkett, but her guardian, Catherine Tew, disliked him. One day, Mr. Boake arrived to visit Ms. Birkett, but Ms. Tew made sure that her charge was upstairs and out of sight. Mr. Boake was not to be trifled with, so he ran upstairs, and Ms. Tew tried to stop him by grabbing one of the tails of his coat, only to have the tail tear off in her hand. After he and Ms. Birkett were married, Mr. Boake kept the one-tailed coat as a souvenir of his courtship.

• When Jack Gilford was courting Madeline Lee, he was working at a resort and called her long distance. The telephone operator at the resort listened to all their conversations and found them very entertaining. Once, after a conversation more than usually filled with passion and drama, Mr. Gilford asked the telephone operator, “How much do I owe you?” With a sob in her throat, the telephone operator said, “Never mind. There’s no charge tonight.”

• A missionary couple stayed at the home of an elderly widow. When they went to bed, they discovered that the bedding was very wrinkled and very dirty, but they slept in the bed anyway. The next morning, the widow explained, “For years there have been so many holy people who have slept in that bed that I’ve never been able to change it.”

• Track superstar Mary Decker frequently wrote an early boyfriend when she was away from him. While in New York, she wrote him four letters in two days and then telephoned him on the third day—she hadn’t received a letter from him yet, and she was worried that something had happened to him.

• A friend of lesbian comedian Judy Carter wore a wedding ring to work. When her co-workers asked what her husband did, she replied, “She works for a pharmacy.”

Chapter 2: From Daughters to Husbands and Wives

Daughters

• Rabbi Joseph Telushkin once watched his two daughters playing together nicely, and he commented to a friend named Dennis Prager how much pleasure this sight was giving him. Mr. Prager asked, “Doesn’t it give you more pleasure than if one of your daughters said ‘I love you, Daddy’ but didn’t act nicely to her sister?” Rabbi Telushkin answered, “Of course.” Mr. Prager then said, “I imagine God is the same way. He derives greater pleasure when people are good to each other than when they are ‘good’ to Him but not to each other.”