Not Young Enough to Know Everything

¿Cómo frijoles? Anybody here speak Spanglish? Who knows the meaning of ¿Cómo frijoles?  (Spanglish for: How have you bean?)

Mark Twain once said “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”

So what’s a girl like you doing in a nice place like this?

The human race is faced with a cruel choice: … schoolwork or day-time television.

All television is children’s television.

I beat up my kid every morning.
I get up at six, and he gets up at seven.

TEACHER:  Class, we will only have half a day of school this morning.
CLASS:  Yippee!  Hooray!
TEACHER:  We will have the other half this afternoon.

The first quality of a good education is good manners – and some people flunk the course.  –Hubert Humphrey

Remark to a disruptive person: “Hey, you! When your IQ rises to 28, sell!”

Some people drink at the fountain of knowledge—some just gargle.

I’m afraid I’ll have to send a note to your parents that I need a written excuse for your presence.

I told a kid to sit up front for the present, and then he complained I didn’t give him one.

I have a note from your regular teacher.  She says, “There’s nothing you need to know about these kids that you haven’t already heard on your police scanner.”

I go to a lot of tough neighborhoods. The kids use barbed wire for dental floss….

…When other kids rub off the blackboards, they rub out the teachers.

I was at one school cafeteria that had such tough slices of meat that one stood up and challenged a kid to a fight after school.

The food is so bad; you get a prescription with every meal. …and the flies go there to commit suicide.

You know how they make Mexican chili?  –They take him to the North Pole.

The kids in one class were so tough, the teacher played hookey.

One kid is really mean.  His parents ran away from home.  …He made the teacher stay after school.  …When he graduated from high school, they gave him a no-class ring.  …When he tried to join the human race, he was turned down.

But there’s one substitute who is so tough, when he calls the roll, even kids who are present pretend they’re absent.

None of the students likes this one teacher.  Last year the kids brought him 37 apples.  Only two of them weren’t ticking.

I asked a kid if he was chewing gum.  He said, “No, I’m Billy Johnson.”

Once in a history class, I caught a kid drawing graffiti in his American Revolution textbook.  I said, “What do you think you are doing?”  He said, “Making my mark in history.”

Some teachers remind you of history.  They’re always repeating themselves.

When I asked someone in a geography class what shape the world was in, I meant “round” or “flat” – not “rotten.”

I asked what’s his excuse for not studying geography?  He said, “Well—my dad says the world is changing every day.  So I decided to wait a little while until it settles down.”

I asked about the English Channel and one kid said he didn’t have cable on his TV.

…He had an I.Q. so low; you had to be careful not to trip over it.

The juvenile crime rate really is getting worse.  You know how in Kindergarten they have those little tricycles?  One teacher caught a repaint main for a hot tricycle ring.

You could say he wasn’t really a juvenile delinquent.  He was merely an active, precocious boy with homicidal tendencies.

There are days when it takes all you’ve got just to keep up with the losers.

I was questioning one kid named Johnny. “If a number of cattle is called a herd, and a number of sheep a flock, what would a number of camels be called?”
He answered, “A carton.”

Who can tell me what is a substitute teacher?  (A Sub is somebody who dies a substandard job?)  One time I tried to explain what a substitute teacher was.  I said, “You know, when a window pane is broken you stuff an old rag in it,… that is a substitute.”  So I delivered my message, and at the close of the class, a little girl rushed up to me and said, “Oh no, Mr. Substitute, you are not an old rag.  You are a real pane.”

Have you heard the one about quicksand?  It takes a long time to sink in.

“Did you hear the one about the piece of rope?”
“Aw, skip it.”

Did you hear the one about the bed?
Well, it hasn’t been made up yet.

Have you heard the latest? It’s all over the building!
You know what is all over the building? …The roof.

NIT: Want to hear the story about the broken pencil?
WIT: No, thanks. I’m sure it has not point.

If a class has a top and a bottom, what lies between?
–The student body.

How do you play hooky from a correspondence school?
–Send them an empty envelope.

Why do soccer players do well in school?  –They use their heads.

Why did the one-eyed monster close down his school?  –He only had one pupil.

Why was the cannibal student suspended from school?
–He kept trying to butter up his teacher.

How is an English teacher like a judge?
–They both hand out sentences.

What do you get if you cross one principal with another principal?
–Don’t do it. Principals don’t like to be crossed.

Why did the little witches flunk out?  –They couldn’t spell.
The Skeleton? — His heart wasn’t in it.
The Owl? –It didn’t give a hoot.

There was an unfortunate accident in his childhood.  He was born.

But there is nothing wrong with him that reincarnation will not cure.

The school psychiatrist asked his exasperated mother: “Does your son have a behavior problem?”  She replied: “I don’t know…. I’ve never seen him behaving.”

One time I asked who started a fight?  One kid said, “He did. He purposely hit me back.”

Some kids have mothers who went in for weight lifting.
How else could they ever raise such dumbbells?

One kid was so stupid he had his address tattooed on his forehead.  That way, when he got lost he could mail himself home.

Another kid was so stupid he had “left” and “right” tattooed on his toes so he would know which feet his shoes should go on.  Now all he has to do is learn how to read.

One kid is so dense he cannot fill in his name on a test unless it’s a multiple-choice question.

One kid is dangerously stupid. He wanted to have his address tattooed on the inside of his eyelids so he could find his way home with his eyes closed.

Some are very smart in school.  They have a photographic memory.  Any time they want to know anything, they drop their brain off at Fotomat and it takes a week to ten days to get it back.  …The only problem is it usually comes back blurry.

Some kids make mothers jealous . . . they look at other kids and get jealous.

One student is a real sloppy dresser.  You’ve heard the expression, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness?”  Well, with this kid, it’s next to impossible.

One MOTHER said: Bobby’s teacher says he ought to have an encyclopedia.
His FATHER replied: Let him walk to school like I had to.

Who can tell me: How many dead people are there in a cemetery?
Answer: All of them.

How many months have 28 days? –All of them.

The brain is a wonderful thing. It starts working the minute you get up in the morning and never stops until you’re called on in class.

School is a mental institution.

The school cafeteria is a place where they serve soup to nuts.

A teacher should never lose his temper in the presence of the class.  If a man, he may take refuge in profane soliloquies; if a woman, she may follow the example of one sweet-faced and apparently tranquil girl – go out in the yard and gnaw on a post. –William Lyon Phelps

Mark Twain said, “When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”

After all, insanity is hereditary; you can get it from your children.

One kid asked why I was looking over my eyeglasses instead of through them? I said it’s so I won’t wear them out.

When Billy got new glasses, his optometrist said he would be able to read everything.  So Billy said, “You mean, I don’t have to go to school anymore?”

The best method of dealing with the insane is to pretend to be sane.

Being a substitute teacher is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.

I told one class if they didn’t stop making so much noise, I’d go crazy.  They said, “Too late, teacher. We stopped an hour ago.”

The last time I was out at Kaiser, I said: “Doctor, I keep thinking I’m a goat.”
He said: “How long have you had this feeling?”
I told him: “Ever since I was a kid.”

My psychiatrist told me I was crazy. I said I wanted a second opinion.  He said “O.K., you’re ugly too!”

I said to the psychiatrist, “Nobody talks to me.”  The psychiatrist said, “Next.”

You know, I’ve had gray hair since I was born.  My mom put talcum powder on the wrong end.

Goethe, the famous German philosopher and poet once pointed out: When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

The closest some people come to a brainstorm is a light drizzle.

How do you spell blind pig?
You probably thin it’s: B-l-i-n-d p-i-g.
Well, no. It’s b-l-n-d p-g. With two i’s, he wouldn’t be blind.

How many “i”s would I use to spell Mississippi?
None. I can do it blindfolded.

Why is the Mississippi such an unusual river?  –Because it has four eyes and can’t see.

I tried not to be too hard on one sixth grader.  I asked him to count up to ten . . . from memory.
Well he counted—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
I said, good, now go on from there. –Jack, Queen, King….

So I asked him, well, is there anything you can do better than anyone else?  He said: Yes, sir, read my own handwriting.

One teacher said, “Write your name and today’s date on the top of the exam paper. Do it carefully. For many of you it will be the only thing you get right on the entire page.”

THE TEST PRAYER:
Now I lay me down to rest,
I pray to pass tomorrow’s test.
If I should die before I wake,
That’s one less test I’ll have to take.

One kid always said his dog ate his homework and no one believed him until last week. His dog graduated from Harvard.

He claims his dog is great at math.  “Just ask him what is two minus two.”  Well I countered that two minus two is nothing.  He said, “That’s what he’ll answer—nothing!”

Why are misers good math teachers?  –They know how to make every penny count.

He’s doing O.K. in math adding up the zeros, but the numbers are still giving him trouble.

I read in the newspaper a report that a young student recently stayed up all night figuring out what became of the sun when it went down.  It finally dawned on him.

If you don’t know what the word “dictionary” means, where would you look it up?

I asked a student what was the definition of ignorance?  He said, “I don’t know.”  I said, “Correct!”

What is an autobiography?  –A car’s life story.

The other day a student sauntered in long after school was under way. I asked him what made him so late?
The little guy stood a moment and then answered: “It’s that warning sign, away down the street, you know, that says in great big letters: ‘School ahead; go slow?’”

…He came crawling into the classroom because the teacher said, “Don’t anyone dare walk in late!”
…He said he was late because the teacher told the class it’s never too late to learn.

When I was a weary father of my five-year-old, I said to my wife: “Talk! Talk! Thank goodness in a few years he’ll be a teenager and we won’t be able to communicate with him.”

Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States.  Ask any Indian.

There’s a lot of controversy over bilingual education.  But did you hear the story about the mother mouse and her baby?  They were scampering across a floor when they heard a noise.  They hoped it was a human being, but it turned out to be the family cat.
Upon seeing the mice, the cat gave chase. Mother mouse felt a swipe and a claw.
She turned in her tracks and called out in her loudest voice, “Bow-wow!” The cat ran off.
Gathering her baby to her, and catching her breath, the mother mouse explained, “Now you see the importance of a second language.”

One day while momma and papa Schulz were reading the language daily, Benjamin was reading a fairy tale to his baby sister. “And mamma bear said, ‘Who’s been eating my porridge?’”
“See,” said mamma. “We ain’t the only ones dot got cockaroaches.”

Once I looked towards a girl who was absorbed in painting her fingernails.
“Miss Bright,” I said, “I’d like to compliment you on your work—but when are you going to do any?”

What’s all this?
Those are my Mae West problems.
Mae West problems?
Yeah – I done ‘em wrong.

She has a vocabulary of one hundred words but she uses them over and over.

Once I asked some students to write an essay, explaining what they would do if they each had $1 million. Every pupil except Teddy began writing. He sat in his chair twiddling his thumbs.
At the end of the class, I collected the papers. Teddy turned in a blank sheet.
“What is the meaning of this?” I asked. “All the others have written two pages or more, but you’ve done nothing!”
“Well,” replied Teddy, “if I had that much money, that’s exactly what I’d do – nothing.”

Well, you see, he was a bad student . . . but a whiz at recess.
He only got 35 in Math and 50 in English, but knocked them cold in Geography. He got a zero.  …He came home with a big zero at the top of his paper.  The teacher usually rewarded good work by putting a gold star at the top of homework.  His mother asked what was the meaning of the zero.  He explained, “Oh, my teacher ran out of stars, so she gave me a moon.”

Did you know that if a growing object is both fresh and spoiled at the same time, chances are it is a child.

You know I keep my kid in the refrigerator to keep him from getting spoiled.
When my kid was five years old, he was terribly spoiled.  Being an only child and the only boy grandchild, his grandparents know he was spoiled.  The neighbors knew it. But his mother, who is a school teacher, just doted on him. He hardly left her side.  When he wanted anything, he either whined, cried, or threw a tantrum.  Then came his first day of school.
When he came home from school, his mother met him at the door. “Was school all right?” she asked.  “Did you get along all right?  Did you cry?”
“Cry?” he asked. “No, I didn’t cry, but the teacher did.”

My kid came home from his first day of school and said, “I’m not going back!” I asked why not?  He said, “Because my teacher doesn’t know anything. All she ever does is ask questions.”

“Children can be awe-inspiringly horrible; manipulative, aggressive, rude, and unfeeling to a point where I often think that, if armed, they would make up the most terrifying fighting force the world has ever seen” –Jill Tweedie

Socrates lived between 470-399 B.C.  He said: “Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.”

The Duke of Windsor once remarked: The think that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.

Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore. –Ogden Nash

Children aren’t happy with nothing to ignore.
And that’s what parents were created for.
–Ogden Nash

Do I believe in clubs for children?  Only if all else fails.

Definition of Adolescence: The period when children are certain they will never be as stupid as their parents.
Or … the age at which children stop asking questions because they know all the answers.

Oscar Wilde once said, I am not young enough to know everything.

Children are unpredictable.  You never know what inconsistency they’re going to catch you in next.

The modern child will answer you back before you’ve said anything.

It is when the gods hate a man with uncommon abhorrence that they drive him into the profession of schoolmaster. –Seneca

“The schoolteacher is certainly underpaid as a childminder, but ludicrously overpaid as an educator.” –John Osborne

The decent docent doesn’t doze:
He teaches standing on his toes,
His student dassn’t doze – and does,
And that’s what teaching is and was.
–David McCord

You know children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers.

Mark Twain wrote: When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Jules Feiffer once said: At sixteen I was stupid, confused and indecisive. At twenty- five I was wise, self-confident, prepossessing and assertive.  At forty-five I am stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. Who would have supposed that maturity is only a short break in adolescence?

It’s important to develop your eccentricities while you are young.  That way, when you are old, people won’t think you’re going ga-ga.

There’s nothing wrong with teenagers, that reasoning with them won’t aggravate.

Fran Lebowitz once wrote in ‘Tips for Teens’: Remember that as a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.

Some people have voices that are very pure.  They strain them every time they talk.

For people who like peace and quiet, there’s always a phoneless cord.

First you teach a child to talk; then you have to teach it to be quiet.

Sometimes I want it so quiet you can hear a pin drop – and if it does, the pin will be sent to the principal’s office.

One principal was annoyed by the noise during an assembly program.
“There seem to be several idiots in the auditorium this morning,” he snapped. “Wouldn’t it be better to hear one at a time?”
A voice shouted, “Okay—you start.”

The librarian said: “Sssshhh! The people next to you can’t read.”
The second-grader said: “What a shame. I’ve been reading since last year.”

One teacher had a simple diet to keep the kids quiet.  Cookies and chloroform.

Albert came home from school one day very unhappy and said he was not going back to school the next day.  His mother asked him why not?  He said, “Well, I can’t read and I can’t write, and they won’t let me talk, so what’s the use?”

That silence is golden may explain why there’s so little of it.

Mark Twain once said: “If we were supposed to talk more than we listen, we would have two mouths and one ear.”

Some kids have sensitive ears.
They scream every time I pull ‘em.

My definition of a team effort is a lot of people doing what I say.

Only dead fish swim with the stream.

How does a skeleton study for tests.  It bones up.

Jonathan Swift once said: When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

British author E.M. Forster pointed out that books have to be read.  It is the only way of discovering what they contain.  A few savage tribes eat them, but reading is the only method of assimilation revealed to the West.

Some people have alphabet soup every day for lunch so they can practice reading at the same time.

Desiderius Erasmus, a writer during the Renaissance, said: When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.

Well, did you know that people spend more money on chewing gum than on books. But after all, you can borrow a book.

One kid took a book from the library because the cover read “How to Hug.”  It turned out to be Volume VII of an encyclopedia.

Why do snobs like books? –Because they have titles.

Why was the math book unhappy? –It had too many problems.

What part of a book is like a fish? –The fin-ish.

Have you seen some of the new college textbooks? Goldilocks and the Three Bears? …Reading time: 14 hours?

One critic said that educational television should be absolutely forbidden. Why?  Because it can only lead to unreasonable expectations and eventual disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around the room with royal-blue chickens.

Too often the person who gets lost in thought does so because it’s unfamiliar territory.

Sign on clock on the wall: “Time will pass. Will you?”

Gertrude Stein said: “It takes a lot of time to be a genius; you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really nothing.”

But seriously, George Bernard Shaw once said: “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”

Learn from the mistakes of others – you can’t live long enough to make them all by yourself.

If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.

Will Rogers noted: Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

Remember that song by Stephen Sondheim, ‘Gee, Officer Krupke,’ in West Side Story?
My father is a bastard,
My ma’s an S.O.B.
My grandpa’s always plastered,
My grandma pushes tea.
My sister wears a moustache,
My brother wears a dress.
Goodness gracious, that’s why I’m a mess.

Sometimes it is better to put off until tomorrow what you are likely to botch today.

If at first you don’t succeed, try looking in the wastebasket for the directions.

One time I said I changed my mind.  Someone said: “Thank goodness. Does the new one work any better?”

I told this class clown to stop showing off. I asked him: Do you think you’re the teacher of this class? He said: No, sir.
So I said: right, then stop behaving like a fool!

So I asked, “Is it true that wise men hesitate and only fools are certain?”
He said, “I’m certain.”

Think of a number between one and twenty.  Double it, subtract the number you started with, close your eyes…. Dark, isn’t it!

The trouble with children is that they are not returnable.

The trouble with students is that there are far too many wide-open spaces surrounded by teeth.

A philosopher told me that, having examined the civil and political order of societies, he now studied nothing except the savages in the books of explorers, and children in everyday life.

Graffiti, for instance.  I’ve been trying to figure out why the sight of it makes my blood pressure jump.  It’s messy and it’s ugly.  As ugly as their lives.  Every time I drive into downtown from the airport, I think of visitors coming to America and seeing this stuff on the walls and it makes me sick that it’s their first impression of us.  Graffiti is preliterate.  It all comes from the original hand in the cave, somebody saying, “I was here.”  We’ve gone from that simple, wondering eloquence of “I was here” to this excremental scribbling.  And you wonder, When do they do it, at four in the morning? When do they do it?  –Larry Gelbart

A face unclouded by thought.

For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.

Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything. –John Kenneth Galbraith

There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking. –Thomas Edison

He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.  –Oscar Wilde

You may have genius. The contrary is, of course, probable.  –Oliver Wendell Holmes

If it weren’t for the misfortune of others, life would be unbearable.

I was the teacher’s pet.  She couldn’t afford a dog.

He was born stupid, and lately he’s had a relapse.

He’s brighter than he looks – but then, he’d just have to be.

If he ever gets a bright idea it’ll be beginner’s luck.

He’s afraid to be lost in thought – he’s a total stranger there.

He’s so dumb, the mind reader only charged him half price.

He swallowed the money his mother gave him because she said it was his lunch money.

It has yet to be proved that intelligence has any survival value.  –Arthur C. Clarke

She’s recovering from an accident – a thought recently struck her.

Her ideas are like diamonds. Not because they’re so valuable, but because they’re so rare.

She’s got such a narrow mind, when she walks fast her earrings bang together! –John Cantu

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.  –George Bernard Shaw

What you don’t know doesn’t hurt you, but it amuses a lot of people.

He has the manners of a gentleman.  I know they didn’t belong to him.

Some people stop to think and then forget to start again.

If you know all the answers, you probably misunderstood the question.

The man who thinks he knows everything irritates those of us who do.

Go on to college, continue your knowledge,
Be smart, be brave, be true.
If they can make penicillin from old moldy cheese,
Surely they can make something out of you.

I’m going to name my first ulcer after you.

I know you have to be somebody – but why do you have to be you?

I never forget a face, and in your case I’ll remember both of them.

I enjoy talking to you.  My mind needs a rest.

You think you’re a wit?  Well, you’re half right.

Don’t move – I want to forget you just the way you are.

Groucho Marx once said, “I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.”

Friends may come and go.  Enemies accumulate!

A man is known by the company he avoids.

When the going gets tough, the smart get lost.

By the way, if you have to leave the room, remember it’s because you can’t take it with you.