THE FUNNIEST PEOPLE IN FAMILIES, VOLUME 6: 250 ANECDOTES

By David Bruce

Dedicated with Love to All My Nephews and Nieces

Many thanks to Ed Venrick for the front cover.

Copyright 2008 by Bruce D. Bruce

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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Cover Photographs

Top: Taken by Frank and Janie Bruce

Bottom: Taken by George Bruce

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The Funniest People in Families, Volume 6: 250 Anecdotes

Chapter 1: From Activism to Couples

Activism

• Richard Reynolds, author of On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening Without Boundaries, is a guerilla gardener. He and other guerilla gardeners do their best to make dull and dreary neighborhoods beautiful by planting flowers on public land and other people’s land without first obtaining permission. This leads to much midnight gardening and to seedbombing land that could benefit from flowers. In 1973, in New York City, a painter named Liz Christy coined the term “guerrilla gardening” after she noticed tomato plants sprouting in heaps of trash in derelict lots near where she lived. She figured that if tomato plants could grow there, then she could and should plant flowers and shrubs there. She and her friends made a garden on the corner of Bowery and Houston streets; the garden has weeping birch trees and flowering perennials, as well as grapes, turtles, and bees. Some guerilla gardeners scatter seeds from their cars, while others engage in seed bombing, a method of delivering seeds along with compost and water to help the seed germinate. Some guerrilla gardeners create their seedbombs from empty chicken eggs, which they fill with seeds, compost, and water, and then throw where flowers are needed. Such a seedbomb is 100 percent biodegradable. Most people support the guerrilla gardeners, once they know that they are not vandals or terrorists. Sometimes, police officers are quite friendly to guerrilla gardeners.

• Folksinger Joan Baez avoids doing what she thinks is nonsensical or wrong. As a child attending school in California, she declined to go outside during a bomb drill. She figured that if someone were to drop a nuclear bomb on the school, going outside wouldn’t help her or anyone else. During the Vietnam War, she declined to pay taxes that she knew would support the war effort, so she went to jail.

• Feminists are often good activists. Several women, including Robin Morgan, Carol Hanisch, Alix Kates Schulman, and Kathie Sarachild, protested the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City in 1968 by crowning their own winner—a sheep! They also filled a garbage can with “instruments of torture to women”: issues of Playboy, girdles and bras, high-heeled shoes, etc.

• One of the early women mountain climbers was Annie Peck, who at age 44 climbed the Matterhorn. After climbing a mountain in Peru, she left behind a flag that bore the message, “Votes for Women.”

Animals

• In 1900, an eccentric teacher in Germany named Wilhelm von Osten bought a horse named Hans. Wilhelm believed that animals are very intelligent, and he gave the horse lessons. Lessons in what? In history, math, music, and spelling! Wilhelm invited people to ask the horse questions. Hans shook his head for no, and he nodded his head for yes. To answer a math question, he would tap his hoof: one tap meant one, two taps meant two, and so on. Amazingly, Hans always answered correctly. Of course, a scientist figured out that Hans was picking up cues from the people who asked him questions, even though they didn’t know that they were giving Hans cues. They always knew the correct answer, and Hans was able to tell how many taps to make from something in the way people acted. Therefore, the scientist arranged for people to ask Hans questions that they didn’t know the answers to, with the result that Hans was no longer able to answer the questions correctly. Of course, Hans really was Clever Hans; it takes cleverness to pick up subtle cues from people. But Hans was not clever in the way that Wilhelm thought he was.

• After George Boyle was paralyzed in a car accident, he started using a capuchin monkey named Gizmo to do things for him that he can no longer do. George sometimes uses a laser light on a rod that he can hold in his mouth to show Gizmo what needs to be done. If George shines the beam on a book, Gizmo brings the book to George. (Gizmo can even turn the pages for George.) If George shines the beam on a light switch, Gizmo turns on the light. Gizmo can also refill George’s water bottle (when George says, “Gizmo, change”), bring him a videotape, and open the refrigerator door. He can even wipe George’s forehead—or scratch him when he itches. The good people at Helping Hands in Boston, Massachusetts, trained Gizmo.

• Bob Denver once had a pygmy marmoset as a pet. She was only four inches tall and for food ate a grape a day. On a flight to LA, Mr. Denver put the box containing his pet in the overhead, then a man placed a box in the overhead. Mr. Denver rearranged the boxes so his pet could breathe, then the man rearranged the boxes. Mr. Denver rearranged the boxes again, then the man rearranged the boxes again. Finally, Mr. Denver said, “Listen, I have a tiny monkey in my box. I want to be sure she’s getting air.” The man also had live animals traveling in his luggage, so he said, “I’ve got the same problem.” Fortunately, the two men were able to arrange the boxes in a way satisfactory to both.

• On January 27, 1997, Lisa Harry and her son, two-year-old Sean, were visiting his grandmother, Phyllis Ingham, in Boston, Georgia. Sean was playing outside on a warm day. Lisa heard him scream, and when she looked up she saw a three-foot-long poisonous water moccasin by Sean. The Ingham family pet, a tiny Chihuahua named Haven, took action. Haven grabbed the snake in her jaws and ran off with it, leaving Sean safely behind. The Ingham family had gotten the Chihuahua from an animal shelter, and Phyllis Ingham says, “The good Lord meant for us to have Haven.”

• One pet of the family of country comedian Jerry Clower is a black poodle named Freckles. Freckles isn’t allowed on the couch, but whenever Mr. Clower’s wife walks out of the room to go to the bedroom, Freckles jumps up on the couch, then stands facing in the direction of the bedroom and listens. As soon as Mr. Clower’s wife comes out of the bedroom and heads to the living room, Freckles jumps off the couch and lies curled up on the floor as if she had been lying there the entire time.

• When Elizabeth Taylor was 14 years old, she became a sensation by starring in the movie National Velvet. When renowned portraitist Yousuf Karsh arrived to photograph her, she was playing with one of her newest pets: a cat. Mr. Karsh named the cat Michael. The next day, both young Elizabeth and Mr. Karsh was on the MGM studio lot, and Elizabeth had her cat with her. She called out to Mr. Karsh, “Look who I have with me: Michael Karsh Taylor.”

• John Christie used to arrange Mozart festivals at Glyndebourne, an old manor house in England. Occasionally, contemporary music would also be played, which he could not stand. During a performance of contemporary music, someone saw Mr. Christie standing in a garden near the performance. Mr. Christie pointed to some fields and said, “Do you see those cows off in the distance? Yes? Well, when we do Mozart, they are always right here.”

• A preacher once told a story about how we pay the price for doing stupid things. As a boy, he had once seen dozens of pigeons in a grain bin, so he told his friends to watch as he scared the pigeons. He then ran into the grain bin and shouted, and the pigeons immediately took flight. However, the preacher asked, “Do you have any idea what a hundred pigeons do when they’re scared?”

• When she was very young, children’s book author Betsy Byars and her best friend used to occasionally set up a free zoo in the backyard of her home. They got leeches to exhibit by wading in a creek, then pulling the leeches off their legs. However, their most popular exhibits were snails and box turtles.

• Natalie Schafer, who played Mrs. Thurston Howell on the TV series Gilligan’s Island, had a small French poodle, Fifi, as a pet. Fifi was too small to jump onto Ms. Schafer’s bed to sleep with her, so Ms. Schafer had a ramp built so that Fifi could climb into bed with her.

• While Jay Leno was in high school, he would sometimes hide a dog in a locker. The custodian would have to open as many as 15 lockers before he found the dog. (Jay and his friends used to bet on how many lockers the custodian would have to open.)

• Actor Peter Lorre had an impish sense of humor. His driveway displayed this large sign: “Beware of ferocious dogs.” The “ferocious” dogs were a couple of tiny Pekinese.

• Actor Patrick Macnee’s father was an expert on horses. When Patrick was born, his father looked him over and said, “Good loins. Pity he’s only got two legs.”

Art

• When young adult author Tamora Pierce was born, her mother wanted to name her Tamara. Unfortunately, the nurse who recorded the name was unfamiliar with how it was spelled and instead of writing Tamara, she wrote Tamora (rhymes with camera). When Tamora was five years old, her mother was majoring in English in college. One of her textbooks was Janson’s History of Art, and while she was studying it, Tamora came over and saw a full-page reproduction of Michelangelo’s David. As is the case in much art, the David was nude, and Tamora’s mother was afraid that she might have some explaining to do. Fortunately, all Tamora said was, “Mum, that man is barefooted.”

• Georgia O’Keeffe preferred to paint rather than entertain the visitors, many of them beginning artists, who sometimes showed up uninvited at her door. She once said, “What can you say to visitors, especially to aspiring artists? ‘Go home and work!’ or else, ‘Nobody’s good at the beginning.’”

• It took decades for sculptor Louise Nevelson to become recognized as a major American artist. After she had become famous, a museum executive arrived 10 minutes late for a meeting with her, and he apologized. Ms. Nevelson replied, “What’s 10 minutes? Where were you 10 years ago?”

Baseball

• Derek Jeter and his sister, Sharlee, are biracial—their father is black, and their mother is white. Both parents, Charles and Dorothy, are very supportive of their children. When Derek played his first major-league game, his father flew to Seattle to watch Derek, a New York Yankee, play. Derek’s mother stayed home because Sharlee was playing a softball game for Kalamazoo Central High School. Later, Charles, Dorothy, and Sharlee drove to Cleveland to see Derek play for the Yankees. Unfortunately, the game was snowed out, and so Charles and Sharlee drove back home because Sharlee had a softball game to play the following day. This time, Dorothy stayed behind to watch Derek play.

• Each spring, the New York Giants used to go to West Point for an exhibition game. Giant manager Leo Durocher once called umpire Tom Gorman ahead of time to suggest that they put on a show. In the fourth inning, Mr. Durocher would find something to get an argument about, they would argue for a while, and then Mr. Gorman would throw him out of the game. They performed the show as planned, and the West Point cadets got a big kick out of the performance, which they thought was real.

• When he was a child, major-league baseball star Bobby Bonilla used to sleep with his baseball bat in his bed. Sometimes he would get up during the night and practice his swing. Javier, his little brother, was always careful when he got out of bed. He says about Bobby, “He almost hit me a couple of times.” Bobby even took his bat along when he visited a girlfriend, whose mother would put away a glass centerpiece just in case Bobby got a little careless with his bat.

• Catcher Joe Garagiola played with many baseball greats. Once, he was asked what it was like to play against the great hitter Stan Musial. He replied, “Whenever I caught against him, he’d step up to the plate and ask me about my family—but before I could answer he’d be on third base.”

Birth

• When Mem Fox, the Australian young people’s author of Possum Magic, was giving birth to Chloë, her daughter, she remembered reading somewhere that singing songs was supposed to lessen the pain of childbirth, so she started singing “Penny Lane.” The pain remained the same, but at least the expressions on the faces of the nurses were amusing. The pain of childbirth was so great, in fact, that at one point she told her husband, “This is the last time, my darling. I’m never doing this again.” The reward of childhood is a child, and Mem greeted her firstborn—who is also her only child, more because of the pressures of having a career than because of having made a declaration during childbirth—with “Hello, my darling.”

• David and Diana Berggren thought that they would be having twins, so they weren’t surprised when their doctor told Mrs. Berggren in the delivery room, “You have two fine, beautiful boys.” Just then, another doctor said, “Here’s a surprise!” The first doctor told Mrs. Berggren, “We have a C,” and she asked, “What’s a C?” The doctor explained, “A C is baby number three—you have triplets.”

Children

• As a reporter for the Chicago Examiner, Charles MacArthur was given a great story by his editor, Walter Howey, who had it on what he thought was good authority that a little girl had been accidentally locked in the railroad safe at the Moline station. The safe was very old, had been kept open for years, and no one alive knew the combination. Mr. MacArthur’s job was to go to Joliet State Prison, promise a governor’s pardon to a couple of safecrackers, and get them to open the safe before the little girl suffocated. He sprang into action, working all night to get the safe open and save the little girl’s life—but when the safe was finally opened, no little girl was inside. (The little girl had been angry at her grandmother, so she had hidden in the attic.) The safecrackers screamed for their pardon anyway, but were taken back to Joliet at gunpoint. Mr. MacArthur figured that there wasn’t a story, but Mr. Howey told him to write it anyway, saying, “It’s a story about humanity. The goodness in people’s hearts. The safe blowers, vice-presidents, doctors, nurses, the warden, the governor, … everybody who answered a cry of human distress.” Mr. MacArthur dictated his story for an hour—it appeared on the front page under the seven-column headline “It’s a Wonderful World.”

• It’s important to stay active one way or the other. Amy Guthrie played coed tee ball when she was five years old. The other little girl on the team, Krista, became her friend. While playing in the field, the two little girls would practice their splits, ignoring any ball that rolled past them and then arguing with each other about who should pick up the ball. Ms. Guthrie says that while she and Krista were arguing “our fathers were smacking their foreheads in frustration.” Later, she grew to like softball—a lot. When she became batgirl for her older sister’s team, she was so proud that she wore her uniform for an entire week—despite her mother’s pleas to let her wash it. However, at age 13 she gave up softball, disappointing her sports-enthusiast father greatly. Instead, she took ballet classes. Because five-years-olds were in the beginners’ class, she took classes with the adults. Her ballet teacher suggested to Amy’s father that he also take ballet classes, and Amy says, “So my father and I learned ballet together.”

• Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, was born in Lochfield, Scotland, in 1881. He grew up on a farm on which lots of snow fell during the winter. Occasionally, he would have to find sheep that had been completely covered by snow. He did this by looking for holes that had been created in the snow by the sheep’s warm breath. As a boy, he attended a one-room schoolhouse. He and the other children would bring peat moss to school during the winter to be burned in the fireplace to keep the school warm. His mother used to give him two hot baked potatoes on cold mornings. He put a hot potato in each pocket of his coat and used them to keep his hands warm as he walked to school, then at noon he ate them. The school sounds primitive by today’s standards, but Mr. Fleming said that he learned very quickly there.

• On September 24, 1974, the daughter of actors Michael Williams and Judi Dench was born. She was named Tara Cressida Frances, but everyone called her Finty. Because Finty’s parents were Shakespearean actors, she learned quotations from Shakespeare as a tiny tot. One parent would say, “I’ll put a girdle around the earth …,” and Finty would finish the quotation: “in 40 minutes.” If a parent asked her what King Lear says, Finty would answer, “Never, never—FIVE times!” In a Nativity play, Finty played the innkeeper’s wife, and when she was asked what the play was about, she replied, “It’s about this innkeeper’s wife, of course.” When Finty was 11 years old, she told a friend that a play her mother was appearing in was “without doubt the most boring play I’ve ever seen in the whole of my life.”

• As you would expect, Roald Dahl, author of Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, told lots of stories to his own children. In fact, that is why he became a writer of children’s literature. He had written a book of short stories for adults (Kiss, Kiss), the book was successful, his publisher wanted more writing from him, he didn’t have any ideas for adult literature, and so he started writing down the stories he had been telling his children, starting with James and the Giant Peach. He once said, “Had I not had children, I would not have written books for children, nor would I have been capable of doing so.” Patricia Neal, his first wife, said, “Roald had a foolproof system for developing his tales. He would tell them to his children, and if they asked to hear one again, he knew he had a winner.”

• On an October day in 1988, an earthquake hit Watsonville, California. Five-year-old Vivian Cooper had always avoided a 100-pound Rottweiler named Reona that lived nearby, but when Vivian started crying in her family’s kitchen when the earthquake hit, the sound traveled to Reona, and Reona came running. Reona pushed Vivian against some kitchen cabinets and then sat on her. As the earthquake continued, a heavy microwave oven fell on the spot where Vivian had been standing. Following the earthquake, Vivian was no longer afraid of the big Rottweiler. Reona’s owner, Jim Patton, says, “Now, there’s a bond between them that just won’t quit.”

• Identical twins and triplets, of course, are very much alike—although they do have different fingerprints. For example, identical triplets David, Donny, and Darren Berggren all wear glasses, but because they have the same prescription, they can trade glasses if they want to. Mothers of identical triplets soon learn that whatever happens to one will soon happen to the others. For example, David lost a baby tooth. A few days later, the family had chili for dinner, and Donny said that there was something hard in his soup. After his mother said there weren’t any hard ingredients in the soup, Donny took a close look and said, “Oh, my gosh. It’s my tooth!”

• After the death of May, the sister of Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women, Louisa adopted May’s daughter: Louisa “Lulu” Nieriker. Lulu was quite an adventurous child. On a trip to the seashore, Lulu heard that Europe was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, so she started walking into the sea, on her way to Europe. Of course, Lulu was stopped from pursuing her journey, but not before she was neck deep in water, and she complained about not being allowed to see the “little twabs” at the bottom of the ocean.

• Bette Midler’s daughter is a Chinese scholar who has attended Beijing University. Ms. Midler says that her daughter has “always loved the Asians.” For example, when she was 13, she wanted to go to Japan. Ms. Midler was touring a lot back then, so she brought her daughter with her to Japan. Sounds educational, right? Actually, her daughter hung out the window while they were driving around Tokyo, saying, “Ooh, he’s hot! Ooh, what a hottie!” Ms. Midler laughs and says, “She tricked us!”

• When children’s author Jane Yolen was a little girl, she was warned many times not to go wading in the dirty bay near where she lived. She used to go wading anyway, and she always got into trouble—her parents knew that she had been wading because the fuel oil that had leaked from ships stuck to her legs. Of course, when she was a little girl, she was naïve. When her father returned home after fighting in World War II, he told her that he had won the war all by himself—she believed him.

• Dodger pitcher Carl Erskine knows a good way to tell how popular a particular player is: simply ask a kid—after all, kids tend to be honest. One day, Mr. Erskine was signing autographs for kids, and he noticed that a particular boy came back for a second autograph, and then a third autograph. He asked the boy why he wanted three autographs, and the boy said, “Actually, I would like to have six. If I can get six of yours, I can trade them for one of Jackie Robinson.”

• Some of the children of Texas preacher Edwin Porter thought about digging through the Earth to China, but decided against it because they were afraid that while digging to China they might inadvertently dig into Hell. Soon after, a missionary from China preached at their church, and during the question-and-answer period one of the preacher’s sons, Gilderoy, spoke up, “I’d like to ask you a question. Did you have to go through Hell to get to China?”

• Autograph hunters come in all shapes and sizes. A mother and her child once approached comedian Red Buttons—the child was holding a piece of paper and a pencil. The mother nudged the child and said, “Tell Red Buttons what you want.” The child was silent, so the mother again told the child, “Tell Red Buttons what you want.” Finally, the child spoke up and told Red Buttons what he wanted: “Ice cream.”

• On a train, Samantha Shen Yanping of Singapore once observed a couple of children, one three and the other five years old, holding four brightly colored balloons. Other families, including one family with two toddlers, then boarded the train. Attracted by the bright colors of the balloons, the toddlers pointed at them and began to cry. The three-year-old and the five-year-old walked over to the toddlers and gave them the balloons.

• According to world-class gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi, the best time to teach gymnastics to students is when they are between seven and eleven, because then they are fearless and obedient. After the students reach puberty, they are harder to teach. Mr. Karolyi says that when they reach puberty, they begin to say, “Wait. I am cute. What for am I falling on my face and bending my nose?”

• When she was a girl, ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq assisted at her parents’ cocktail parties by carrying around a big plate of hors d’oeuvres to offer guests. However, every so often—without her parents’ knowledge—she would disappear with the plate beneath a table and gorge herself with peanuts, sandwiches, potato chips, dips, olives, and anchovies.

• Children’s book author Betsy Byars has published over 50 books, but even she has her failures—books that never get published. One night, Guy, her nearly eight-year-old son, had insomnia, and he asked to read one of her failures. Ms. Byars says, “He read for about three minutes … and fell fast asleep. It was a humbling moment.”

• When Balanchine ballerina Allegra Kent was a child, her parents divorced, and she lived with her mother. One of the things her mother taught her was to say bad things about her father. One day, some classmates of young Allegra asked her what her father did for a living. Allegra replied, “I don’t know, but he’s a fool.”

• At age 2, Frances Gumm—the future Judy Garland—sang two songs (“Jingle Bells” and “When I Take My Sugar to Tea”) at a theater where her father was performing. She liked the applause so much that she wouldn’t leave the stage, and finally her father had to bodily pick her up and carry her off.

• Patrick Bissell, a ballet dancer with American Ballet Theatre, studied dance as a boy while being raised in a farm community in Ohio. The other boys thought that ballet was for sissies, so young Patrick got into so many fights that his teachers in school thought he was a troublemaker.

• After Mary Lou Retton won gold in the all-around competition at the 1984 Olympics, she went back to her gym to train, and lots of eight-year-old gymnasts she had trained with asked her for her autograph. Ms. Retton was surprised: “What do you mean, autographs? You know me.”

• Choreographer Twyla Tharp was raised to be a success. Her father told her, “I don’t care if you dig ditches, as long as you dig the best ditches.” When she was born, her mother sent out birth announcements, on which she had written, “She’ll grow up to be famous.”

• One of Peg Bracken’s friends has an 11-year-old son who enjoys reading industrial-strength philosophy: Kant, James, Hegel, etc. When the friend travels, she insists that her son keep the titles of the books hidden so that the family can pay half-fare for him.

• As a 12-year-old child, Phyllis Diller was teased about her looks. One day, she looked at herself very carefully in the mirror, then said, “Honey, you’d better settle for inner beauty.” As an adult, Ms. Diller says, “I still wish I’d had a choice.”

• Peg Bracken blew up many balloons for her daughter’s sixth party, but rain fell, necessitating a cancellation until better weather arrived. Her daughter was disappointed, saying, “It seems like a terrible waste of balloons.”

• Pisistratus wanted to remarry, but his sons tried to stop him by asking, “Aren’t you satisfied with us?” He replied, “Very—that’s why I want more like you.”

• Comedian Joey Adams had a five-year-old niece who sometimes slipped into bed without saying her prayers because “there are some nights when I don’t want anything.”

Christmas

• When Beth Quinn, former columnist for New York’s Times Herald-Record, was young, she and her sister looked forward to two big presents—one for each of them—each Christmas. The two big presents came in two big boxes, the tops of which were wrapped in colorful paper. One box’s top was red; the other box’s top was blue. To open the box and see the present, all a child had to do was to take the top off of a box. When Beth was about eight years old and wondering if Santa Claus was real, she came across these two boxes in her family’s storage area. To Beth, this was disturbing evidence that perhaps Santa Claus was not real, so she asked her father about the boxes: “Why are they here? Why doesn’t Santa have them?” Her father explained the situation well: “What are you, nuts or something? You think Santa can haul everything around with him? He asked your mother and me years ago to keep those boxes here. He said to put them out on Christmas Eve so he can fill them.” This made sense to Beth, who realized, “So that’s why the lids come off like that! So he can fill them and doesn’t have to wrap them each time!” Her father agreed: “He’s a smart guy, that Santa.”