Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (78 page)
Read Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers' Institute
THE LIBERTY BELL
The Myth:
The Liberty Bell, which rang at the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, has always been a precious symbol of our nation’s heritage.
The Truth:
The bell, installed in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia in 1753, was almost bartered off as scrap metal in 1828 when the building was being refurbished. According to one account, “The Philadelphia city fathers...contracted John Wilbank, a bell maker from Germantown, Pennsylvania, to cast a replacement for the Liberty Bell. He agreed to knock $400 off his bill in exchange for the 2,000-pound relic. When Wilbank went to collect it, however, he decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. ‘Drayage costs more than the bell’s worth,’ he said.” The city of Philadelphia actually sued to force him to take it. But Wilbank just gave it back to them as a gift, “unaware that he’d just bartered away what would become the most venerated symbol of American independence.”
Boris Karloff’s real name was William Henry Pratt.
WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE
The Myth:
Emanuel Leutze’s famous painting is a dramatically accurate portrayal of General Washington’s famous crossing.
The Truth:
According to Scott Morris, there are inaccuracies.
• “The crossing was in 1776, but the Stars and Stripes flag shown wasn’t adopted until the next year.”
• “The real boats were forty to sixty feet long, larger than the rather insubstantial ones shown.”
• The soldiers wouldn’t have pointed their guns in the air, because it was snowing.
• “Washington certainly knew not to stand—a pose that would have made the boat unstable, and put him in danger of falling overboard.”
• The river in the painting isn’t the Delaware. Leutze worked in Düsseldorf, Germany, and used the Rhine River as his model.
HAMILTON WAS AN INNOCENT VICTIM
The Myth:
Alexander Hamilton, who was killed in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr in 1804, was too decent a man to shoot his rival. So he shot in the air instead...and died when Burr paid him back by shooting to kill.
The Truth:
“For nearly two centuries,” Steve Talley writes in
Bland Ambition
, “history saw Hamilton as something of a martyr who...never meant to harm Burr. But it now appears that he lost the duel...
because he tried to use an unfair advantage
to kill the vice president.” Talley continues:
As part of the U.S. bicentennial celebration, the Smithsonian Institution decided to have the pistols used in the Burr-Hamilton duel restored. What they found was that the guns—which had been provided for the duel by Hamilton—had several features that were not allowed on dueling pistols...most significantly, a special hair-trigger feature. By surreptitiously setting the trigger so that only a half pound of pressure—instead of the normal ten to twelve pounds—was needed to fire the gun, a duelist could gain an incredible advantage, since both men were to fire at the same time. Instead of displaying nearly godlike mercy, Hamilton planned to kill Burr before Burr had a chance to fire. But in his nervousness, Hamilton apparently held the gun too tightly, firing it too soon, and the shot struck the leaves over Burr’s head.
Family values: 75% of U.S. adults live within an hour’s drive of their parents.
It’s a truism we all learn as kids: A dog goes bow-wow...a cat goes meow... etc. A universal language, right? Nope. Believe it or not, animal sounds vary from language to language. Here are some examples.
PIGS
English
: Oink Oink!
Russian
: Kroo!
French
: Groin Groin!
German
: Grunz!
ROOSTERS
English
: Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Arabic
: Ku-ku-ku-ku!
Russian
: Ku-ka-rzhi-ku!
Japanese
: Ko-ki-koko!
Greek
: Ki-ki-ri-koo!
Hebrew
: Ku-ku-ri-ku!
DUCKS
English
: Quack Quack!
Swedish
: Kvack Kvack!
Arabic
: Kack-kack-kack!
Chinese
: Ga-ga!
French
: Guahn Quahn!
FROGS
English
: Croak!
Spanish
: Croack!
German
: Quak-quak!
Swedish
: Kouack!
Russian
: Kva-kva!
TWEETY-BIRDS
English
: Tweet Tweet!
French
: Kwi-kwi!
Hebrew
: Tsef Tsef!
Chinese
: Chu-chu!
German
: Tschiep Tschiep!
GEESE
English
: Honk Honk!
Arabic
: Wack Wack!
German
: Schnatter-schnatter!
Japanese
: Boo Boo!
OWLS
English
: Who-whoo!
Japanese
: Ho-ho!
German
: Koh-koh-a-oh!
Russian
: Ookh!
CATS
English
: Meow!
Hebrew
: Miyau!
German
: Miau!
French
: Miaou!
Spanish (and Portuguese and German)
: Miau!
DOGS
English
: Bow-wow!
Swedish
: Voff Voff!
Hebrew
: Hav Hav!
Chinese
: Wang-wang!
Japanese
: Won-won!
Swahili
: Hu Hu Hu Huuu!
CHICKENS
English
: Cluck-cluck!
French
: Cot-cot-cot-codet!
German
: Gak-gak!
Hebrew
: Pak-pak-pak!
Arabic
: Kakakakakakakakaka!
The average person laughs seven to eight times a day.
Thoughts from Erma Bombeck, one of America’s wittiest dispensers of common sense.
“A child develops individuality long before he develops taste.”
“Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.”
“The bad times I can handle. It’s the good times that drive me crazy. When is the other shoe going to drop?”
“My mother phones daily to ask, ‘Did you just try to reach me?’ When I reply ‘No,’ she adds, ‘So, if you’re not too busy, call me while I’m still alive,’ and hangs up.”
“There are few certainties when you travel. One of them is that the moment you arrive in a foreign country, the American dollar will fall like a stone.”
“I firmly believe kids don’t want your understanding. They want your trust, your compassion, your blinding love and your car keys, but you try to understand them and you’re in big trouble.”
“To my way of thinking, the American family started to decline when parents began to communicate with their children. When we began to ‘rap,’ ‘feed into one another,’ and encourage our kids to ‘let things hang out’ that mother didn’t know about and would rather not.”
“If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.”
“It seems rather incongruous that in a society of supersophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.”
“I will never engage in a winter sport with an ambulance parked at the bottom of the hill.”
“When you look like your passport photo, it’s time to go home.”
“Guilt is a gift that keeps on giving.”
If a pack-a-day smoker inhaled a week’s worth of nicotine all at once, he would die instantly.
When signs in a foreign country are written in English, any combination of words is possible. Here are some real-life examples.
“It is forbidden to steal hotel towels please. If you are not person to do such thing is please not to read notis.”
—Japanese hotel
“You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid.”
—Japanese hotel
“Do not enter the lift backwards, and only when lit up.”
—Leipzig hotel elevator
“To move the cabin, push button for wishing floor. If the cabin should enter more persons, each one should press a number of wishing floor. Driving is then going alphabetically by national order.”
—Belgrade hotel elevator
“Please leave your values at the front desk.”
—Paris hotel elevator
“Our wines leave you nothing to hope for.”
—Swiss restaurant menu
“Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11 a.m. daily.”
—Athens hotel
“The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid.”
—Yugoslavia hotel
“The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.”
—Bucharest hotel lobby
“Not to perambulate corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension.”
—Austrian hotel for skiers
“Salad a firm’s own make; limpid red beet soup with cheesy dumplings in the form of a finger; roasted duck let loose; beef rashers beaten up in the country people’s fashion.”
—Menu at a Polish hotel
According to many psychologists, fingernail biting is a sign of stubbornness.
Here are the origins of some more famous phrases.
T
HE HANDWRITING IS ON THE WALL
Meaning:
The outcome (usually negative) is obvious.
Background:
The expression comes from a Babylonian legend in which the evil King Belshazzar drank from a sacred vessel looted from the Temple in Jerusalem. According to one version of the legend, “A mysterious hand appeared after this act of sacrilege and to the astonishment of the king wrote four strange words on the wall of the banquet room. Only the Hebrew prophet, Daniel, could interpret the mysterious message. He boldly told the ruler that they spelled disaster for him and for his nation. Soon afterward, Belshazzar was defeated and slain, just as Daniel said.” The scene was a popular subject for tapestries and paintings during the Middle Ages.
OLD STOMPING GROUND
Meaning:
Places where you spent a lot of time in your youth or in years past.
Background:
The prairie chicken, which is found in Indiana and Illinois, is famous for the courtship dance it performs when looking for a mate. Large groups of males gather together in the morning to strut about, stamp their feet, and make booming noises with their throats. The original settlers used to get up early just to watch them; and the well-worn patches of earth became known as
stomping grounds.
JIMINY CRICKET
Meaning:
The name of the cricket character in the Walt Disney film
Pinocchio;
also a mild expletive.
Background:
The name Jiminy Cricket predates
Pinnochio...
and has nothing to do with crickets. It is believed to have originated in the American colonies as “a roundabout way of invoking Jesus Christ.” (Since the Puritans strictly forbade taking the Lord’s name in vain, an entire new set of kinder, gentler swear words—darn, dang, heck, etc.—were invented to replace them.
More shoplifters are arrested on Wednesdays in January than at any other time of the year.
THE BITTER END
Meaning:
The very end—often an unpleasant one.
Background:
Has nothing to do with bitterness. It’s a sailing term that refers to end of a mooring line or anchor line that is attached to the
bitts
, sturdy wooden or metal posts that are mounted to the ship’s deck.
HAVE A SCREW LOOSE
Meaning:
Something is wrong with a person or mechanism.
Background:
The phrase comes from the cotton industry and dates back as far as the 1780s, when the industrial revolution made mass production of textiles possible for the first time. Huge mills sprang up to take advantage of the new technology (and the cheap labor), but it was difficult to keep all the machines running properly; any machine that broke down or produced defective cloth was said to have “a screw loose” somewhere.
MAKE THINGS HUM
Meaning:
Make things run properly, smoothly, quickly, and efficiently.
Background:
Another cotton term: the guy who fixed the loose screws on the broken—and thus
silent
—machines was known as the person who
made them hum
again.
IF THE SHOE FITS, WEAR IT
Meaning:
“If something applies to you, accept it.”
Background:
The term is a direct descendant of the early 18th-century term “if the cap fits, put it on,” which referred specifically to
fool’s caps
.
PLEASED AS PUNCH
Meaning:
Delighted.
Background:
Believe it or not, the expression has nothing to do with party beverages—it has to do with the rascally puppet character Punch (of Punch and Judy fame), who derived enormous sadistic pleasure from his many evil deeds. The phrase was so popular that even Charles Dickens used it in his 1854 book,
Hard Times.
There’s enough salt in the world’s oceans to cover the entire U.S. with a layer 1½ miles deep.
Uncle John has a lot of bathroom superstitions. He won’t use soap if it’s already wet; he always wears a baseball cap while brushing his teeth; he’ll only sing in the shower if the fan is on. Maybe that’s why he likes this article by Jack Connelly.
A
BASEBALL TRADITION
If you pay close attention when you’re watching your favorite baseball team, you may notice that the so-called boys of summer engage in some pretty odd behavior. [For example,] you might see a coach kick dirt at first base while spitting toward second base four times. This supposedly prevents a runner from being picked off or thrown out while trying to steal.