Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (28 page)

If you’re average, your feet hit the floor 7,000 times a day.

LIBRARIAN.
Your old reference books, such as encyclopedias, will be withdrawn and pulped. You should keep handy a pair of sharp scissors and a supply of paste, as you will have to cut out or replace those entries that become politically inconvenient—a normal Soviet practice. As the years go by, even the more harmless books on your shelves will be gradually replaced as works commissioned and printed by the State begin to appear in adequate numbers. If you can safely save and secrete some of the books that are being discarded, well and good; although your superiors will be on the lookout for this, and it may be hazardous for you or your friends to be caught reading them.

PET SHOP OWNER.
It is unlikely that families will be able to spare any scraps of food for feeding pets, let alone extra money for grooming them or purchasing accessories. Most cats and dogs will have to be put to sleep or allowed to run free and take their chances. After the fighting stops, there will be a serious infestation of ownerless dogs running in wild packs with which authorities will have to deal. Owners of pet shops should lose no time in making plans for alternative employment.

PSYCHOPATH.
If you are able and prepared to control yourself in all matters where you might offend authorities, a wide field of activity of a type you will find rewarding will remain open to you. Those not afflicted with consciences will be in demand not only to occupations offering opportunities of violence, but also in all other institutions, where it will always be possible to denounce anyone who stands in the way of your desires or to blackmail them into submitting. Indeed, the Soviet system...has been described as a psychopathocracy. If your condition is of the right type, you may rise very high indeed in the new hierarchy.

SADIST.
Although the secret police will have some use for torturers, such positions are unlikely to be open except to men with political acumen and training, but low-grade thugs, known as “boxers,” are often employed for routine beatings....If you apply for the post of an executioner, you might be enrolled in one of the municipal firing squads. Your opportunity to carry out individual executions, if that is your taste, will probably be somewhat limited. The traditional Soviet method of executing single offenders is by means of a bullet in the back of the neck and is invariably conducted neatly and expeditiously by a specialist of officer rank. Mass executions are bound, of course, to occur, and you may well be given a chance to participate in some of them.

First million-selling album in U.S. history: the soundtrack to
Oklahoma
, 1958.

YOUTH.
You will find yourself under very heavy pressures of a type which your present life has not accustomed you....The special Communist effort to indoctrinate you will mean that you will be under considerably higher pressures than your elders....You will lose several hours a week at compulsory sessions in Marxist-Leninism, in addition to endless harangues about loyalty and the glorious future, which you will be expected to applaud. Still...you have one great point in your favor: unlike your parents, you may find that the overthrow of Soviet power will come when you are still in the full vigor of, perhaps, your forties, when you will provide the leaders to build a new America and a new world.

Just as the airlines hope that their passengers will never have to follow the instructions they give you on what to do in case of a disaster, so we, for our part, hope you may never have to follow the advice we have given you in the preceding pages. But time is running short. We would be deceiving you if we pretended that the nightmare we have described is not a real and deadly possibility. If it does come about, we have one last piece of advice:

BURN THIS BOOK.

“I didn’t intend for this to take on a political tone. I’m just here for the drugs.

—Nancy Reagan,
referring to a “Just Say No” rally

“The press says that the public has a right to know everything.

That’s a load of garbage.”

—George Lauder, CIA
spokesman

On any given day, 60 million U.S. females and 41 million U.S. males are dieting.

More unusual epitaphs and tombstone rhymes from our wandering BRI tombstoneologists.

Seen in Oxfordshire, England:

Here lies the body of John Eldred
,

At least he will be here when he is dead.

But now at this time, he is alive,

The 14th of August, 1765.

Seen in Plymouth, Mass.:

Richard Lawton

Here lie the bones of Richard Lawton,

Whose death, alas! was strangely brought on.

Trying his corns one day to mow off,

His razor slipped and cut his toe off.

His toe, or rather, what it grew to,

An inflammation quickly flew to.

Which took, Alas! to mortifying,

And was the cause of Richard’s dying.

Seen in Luton, England:

Thomas Proctor

Here lies the body of Thomas Proctor,

Who lived and died without a doctor.

Seen in Shrewsbury, England:

Here lies the body of Martha Dias
,

Who was always uneasy, and not over-pious;

She lived to the age of three score and ten,

And gave to the worms what she refused to the men.

Seen in Marshfield, Vt.:

Here lies the body of William Jay
,

Who died maintaining his right of way;

He was right, dead right, as he sped along,

But he’s just as dead as if he’d been wrong.

Seen in Lee, Mass.:

In Memory of Mrs. Alpha White, Weight 309 lbs.

Open wide ye heavenly gates

That lead to the heavenly shore;

Our father suffered in passing through

And Mother weighs much more.

Seen in Putman, Conn.:

Phineas G. Wright

Going, But Know Not Where

It took 14 years to build the Brooklyn Bridge.

Some tunes are so familiar that it seems like they’ve just always been around. Of course, every song has its beginning. Here are the stories of how some old favorites were written.

D
IXIE

Written in 1859 by Daniel Decatur Emmett for a blackface minstrel show. Ironically, though his song became the anthem of the South, Emmett was a northerner who detested the Confederacy. When he found out the song was going to be sung at Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s inauguration, he told friends, “If I had known to what use they were going to put my song, I’ll be damned if I’d have written it.”

HERE COMES THE BRIDE

Composer Richard Wagner wrote the “Bridal Chorus” in 1848 for his opera
Lohengrin
. He used it to score a scene in which the hero and his new bride undress on their wedding night and prepare to consummate their marriage. It was first used as a bridal march in 1858, when Princess Victoria (daughter of England’s Queen Victoria) married Prince Frederick William of Prussia. Interestingly, because of the sexual nature of the original opera scene, some religions object to using the song in wedding ceremonies.

CHOPSTICKS

In 1877, 16-year-old Euphemia Allen, a British girl, published “Chopsticks” under the pseudonym Arthur de Lulli. Included with the sheet music were instructions telling the pianist to play the song “with both hands turned sideways, the little fingers lowest, so that the movement of the hands imitates the chopping from which this waltz gets its name.” Allen never wrote another song.

TAPS

As late as 1862, the U.S. military used a song called “Extinguish Lights” to officially end the day. General Daniel Butterfield disliked the song...so he decided to compose a new one to replace it. He couldn’t play the bugle, so he composed by whistling notes to his butler, who’d play them back for Butterfield to evaluate. They went through dozens of tunes before he got one he liked.

Tornadoes can last as long as nine hours.

Say hello to Dr. Seuss, a rhymer of rhymes both tight and loose. A BRI favorite he really is; the following story is really his.

V
ITAL STATS

Born:
March 2, 1904

Died:
September 25, 1991, age 87

• Although married twice, he never had any children. His slogan: “You have ’em, I’ll amuse ’em.”

Real Name:
Theodore Seuss Geisel

• He adopted “Seuss” as his writing name during Prohibition, while attending Dartmouth College. The reason: He was caught with a half-pint of gin in his room and was told to resign as editor of the college humor magazine as punishment. Instead, he just stopped using Geisel as a byline.

• Years later, he added “Dr.” to his name “to sound more scientific.” He didn’t officially become a doctor until 1956, when Dartmouth gave him an honorary doctorate.

CAREER STATS

Accomplishments:
He wrote 48 books, selling more than 100 million copies in 20 languages. (Including four of the top 10 bestselling hardcover childrens’ books of all time:
The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Hop on Pop
, and
One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish
.)

• As a filmmaker, he won three Oscars—two for documentaries made in the 1940s (
Hitler Lives
, about Americans troops, and
Design for Death
, about Japanese warlords), and one in 1951 for animation (
Gerald McBoing-Boing
). By that time, he had written four kids’ books and turned down Hollywood screenplay offers in order to keep writing them.

• In 1984 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his contribution to children’s literature.

Flops:
Only one—a novel called
The Seven Lady Godivas
, an “utterly ridiculous retelling of the story of Lady Godiva” that was first published in 1937 and republished 40 years later. He always wanted to write The Great American Novel...but the book bombed in 1977, too.

Need a friend? 57% of Americans have pets.

How He Got Started:
He was working as a cartoonist in the late 1920s for
Judge
magazine. One of his cartoons “showed a knight using Flit insecticide to kill dragons.” Someone associated with Flit’s ad agency (McCann-Erikson) saw the cartoon and hired Geisel. For the next 10 years he created ads for Flit and other Standard Oil products. His greatest claim to fame at the time: a well-known ad phrase, “Quick Henry, the Flit!”

His contract with McCann-Erikson allowed him to write and publish books for kids, so he wrote
To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
. It was turned down by 27 publishers. Said Seuss: “The excuse I got for all those rejections was that there was nothing on the market quite like it, so they didn’t know whether it would sell.” Vanguard Press finally picked it up in 1937, and it was an immediate success. So he quit the ad agency and began writing kids’ books full-time.

HOW HE GOT HIS IDEAS

“The most asked question of any successful author,” Seuss said in 1989, “is ‘How do you get your ideas for books?’” Over the years he did reveal a number of his inspirations:

Horton Hatches the Egg

“Sometimes you have luck when you are doodling. I did one day when I was drawing some trees. Then I began drawing elephants. I had a window that was open, and the wind blew the elephant on top of the tree; I looked at it and said, ‘What do you suppose that elephant is doing there?’ The answer was: ‘He is hatching an egg.’ Then all I had to do was write a book about it. I’ve left that window open ever since, but it’s never happened again.”

Green Eggs and Ham

• Bennett Cerf, the founder and publisher of Random House, bet Geisel $50 that he couldn’t write a book using just 50 words.

• Geisel won the bet. “It’s the only book I ever wrote that still makes me laugh,” he said 25 years later. He added: “Bennett never paid!”

Food fact: 41% of Americans eat breakfast cereal every morning.

Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now?

“The puppylike creature constantly asked to ‘go’ is ex-President Richard M. Nixon.”

The Lorax

Dr. Seuss’s favorite book, he said, “is about people who raise hell in the environment and leave nothing behind.” He wrote the story on a laundry list as he sat at a hotel pool in Kenya, watching a herd of elephants with his wife. “I wrote it as a piece of propaganda and disguised the fact,” he told a reporter. “I was on the soapbox. I wasn’t afraid of preaching—but I was afraid of being dull.”

Yertle the Turtle

“Yertle the turtle is Adolf Hitler.”

The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins

In 1937 Geisel was on a commuter train in Connecticut. “There was a very stiff broker sitting in front of me. I wondered what his reaction would be if I took his hat off and threw it out the window. I decided that he was so stuffy he would grow a new one.”