A classic joke goes like this: A nurse rushes into an exam room and says, "Doctor, doctor, there's an invisible man in the waiting room." The doctor says, "Tell him I can't see him." Pretty simple, right? Here's how I tell it: "A nurse--her name is Joyce--feels a presence in the waiting room. She looks around but sees nothing. She jumps up from her desk, carefully replaces her chair, and runs down the lavender-hued hallway to the doctor's office. She knocks on the door. No response. He's not there. Where can he be? She continues down the hall, admiring a lithograph of an 18th-century Mississippi paddleboat along the way." By this time, my audience has left, but I soldier on. "She bursts into the exam room and says, 'Doctor, doctor!' The doctor, I should mention, is a urologist with a degree from Ohio State, which is where my nephew ..." You get the idea. I'm an embellisher. I can't leave a simple gag alone. I'm not the only joke-challenged member of the family. My sister's worse than I am. Her problem: She can't remember them. "'A nurse rushes into an exam room and says...'Uh, let me start all over again. 'A nurse rushes into a waiting...'No, it's not the waiting room. She just came from the waiting room. Let me start all over again. 'A doctor rushes into...' No, wait..." My uncle's different. He's guilty of taking a perfectly fine joke and selling it as the second coming of Oscar Wilde, "Okay, this is a good one. Ready? No, really, ready? Okay, fasten your seat belts. Ready?'A nurse...'Got it? A nurse? Okay, ready?'A nurse rushes into an exam room and says, "Doctor, doctor, there's an invisible man in the waiting room."' Now, this is where it gets funny. Ready?" No one is ever ready, so they leave before he gets to the punch line. My father's on Wall Street, so he hears all the jokes before they hit the Web. And he lets you know he knows them all by telling you all of them. He also knows that most people don't like jokes. So he slips them in under the radar: "I was chatting with Ben Bernanke the other day.... Which is the best title of the passage? A) Learn to Amuse Others B) Where to Find a Doctor C) How to Ruin a Classic Joke D) A Story about a Funny Family
C
(Question)
Pepito the Brave By Scott Beck, Dutton, ISBN 0-525-46524-3, $12.99 Ah, the time in life when one has to leave home. No one seems to have as hard a time with it as Pepito. Pepito is a little bird who needs to leave the nest, but the problems is, he's afraid of heights. This makes flying away a bit of a problem, so like most people (or birds in this case) he avoids it, when he finds himself in a new situation, someone happens to give him some advice. A fox suggests he run to where he's going (I got nervous when he came across a fox, _ , a frog tells him to hop, a gopher to burrow . After his various attempts not to fly, he makes it to his brothers' and sister's new tree, and realizes that what he's done is much harder than actually trying to fly. It's a charming story with a good message--often facing up to our fears is much easier than running from them. The Stray Dog By Marc Simont, HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-028933-3, $15.95 As someone who has taken in his share of stray animals, I can totally relate to the family in The Stray Dog. While picnicking one day, they befriend a dog that wanders by. Everyone immediately falls in love, but they leave him behind, figuring he belongs to someone else. But as the week goes by, none of them can get the dog, which they've named Willy, off their mind. So naturally the next Saturday they go back to that same place to see if Willy's still there. They find that not only does he not have an owner, but they've arrived just in time to prevent a catastrophe. Kids who love animals will definitely _ in the action, and even those who don't will appreciate the quick thinking children who save the day. Which of the following statements in NOT true according to the text? A) Pepito the Brave is a storybook about a bird named Pepito. B) Pepito turns to brothers and sisters because a gopher is trying to catch him. C) In The Stray Dogthere are some quick thinking children. D) Willy is the name of the stray dog that has to wander about.
(Answer)
B
An American psychotherapist Glenn Doman wrote a best-selling book calledHow to Teach Your Baby to Readin 1963. Now translated into 17 languages, this book arose from his work with brain-damaged children in Pennsylvania. Doman and his team of specialists had wondered why brain-injured children didn't improve with treatment. Then they realized that orthodox methods of treatment only relieved the symptoms, not the problem, which of course was the brain itself. So they develop a new approach. "All we do for all the children here is to give them visual, auditory and tactile stimulation with increased frequency, intensity and duration, in recognition of the orderly way in which the brain grows," says Doman. "The result was that by 1960 we had hundreds of severely brain-injured two-year-olds who could read and understand." The team had discovered that even children who had half their brains removed could, by stimulation, achieve higher IQs than the average normal child. Then the team began to think if such amazing results could be achieved with brain-damaged children, what would happen if the same treatment were given to normal children? So eight years ago the Better Baby Institute was opened for the benefit of normal children. The same stimulating environment was provided, and by the time the children left, around seven years old, they could generally speak and read three foreign languages, play a musical instrument, read three full-length books a week and do all the other things that a so-called "normal" child could do. In Doman's view, the child's passion to learn during the years up to six must be fed. He believes that, like muscles, the brain develops with use, especially so in those first few years. Nowadays, parents come from all over the world to Pennsylvania to see and learn from the workof Doman and his team; they want to discover how they can fulfill their roles as nature's teachers, by using their love, understanding and instincts for the benefit of the children. For in the words of Doman,... Parents come to the Institute because they want _ . A) their children to become as intelligent as Leonardo da Vinci B) to learn how to teach their children about nature C) to develop their own abilities to help their children D) their children to develop instincts of love and understand
C