Father Knows Less Or: Can I Cook My Sister?

by Wendell Jamieson

  ME: “Did you have to fight the urge to change? Did you find yourself saying, ‘Well, I really don’t need a Rolls-Royce, but now that I can afford it, maybe I’ll buy one’?”

  “One thing that I learned very quickly is that the lure of having that nice house, that nice car, well, the attraction of that is more when you can’t have it than when you can. It’s cool to have the ability to do it, but it is cooler not to do it. I had no problem fighting those urges.”

  “Why do people buy things they don’t need?”

  —ELLA HESTER, age seven, Brooklyn, New York

  Sandra Heiman, Hudson Valley, New York, who suffers from compulsive shopping disorder:

  “People who over-shop or spend compulsively think that they need the items they buy at the time they purchase them. These people are often trying to distract themselves from feelings that are painful to them, such as loneliness, low self-esteem, anger, hurt, loss…among others. It starts off as a fun thing to do, one that brings pleasure. But eventually shopping starts to control the person rather than the other way around. For these people, over-shopping or buying things they don’t need can become self-destructive, like any addiction, and cause problems in the person’s family and relationships.”

  ME: “What’s the craziest thing you ever bought? Something that you looked at the next day and were like, ‘What’s this? I don’t need this.’”

  “I never really felt that I didn’t need it. I am very practical about what I buy. I buy things that are pretty or beautiful or high quality. I may run across a pair of shoes after I’ve had a dress or an outfit for years and think, ‘Wow, this would be great.’ I used shopping to distract me from pain, or loneliness or emptiness. Even if I didn’t buy the item and bring it home the next day, I would put it on layaway and I’d think about it and it made me feel better.”

  “So what kind of things were you buying?”

  “Jewelry, shoes, clothing mostly, maybe some makeup. It started out when money was more fluid, and then when money got cut back, I still had the need without the means. Then I started to do things that were dishonest to get them. I’d find a way to get the money. I never stole. Somebody else would look at me and say, ‘Why does she need another pair of shoes? Why does she need another dress?’ But for me, I just needed it.”

  “Why does a dollar sign have an S in it?”

  —STELLA HACKETT, age seven, Brooklyn, New York

  Richard Doty, curator, National Numismatics Collection, National Museum of American History, Washington:

  “It is most likely from Spanish notation—it’s shorthand, basically, for pesos. Our dollars started out as pesos, which means ‘pieces of eight.’ When we were colonies we were trading bootleg with the Spanish Empire and we were getting pieces of eight, and that became the genesis for the American dollar. Paper money in Maryland actually showed a piece of eight on the one-dollar bill. One way of writing pesos was having a ‘p’ with a couple of downstrokes, and then the loop around, and over time, I think, personally, it evolved into the ‘S’ with the lines through it we see today.”

  “Why does the pyramid on the dollar bill have an eye in it?”

  —DEAN

  Doug Mudd, curator of exhibitions for the American Numismatic Association Money Museum, Colorado Springs, Colorado:

  “The pyramid-and-eye design for the back of the dollar bill is based on the Great Seal of the United States, originally designed during the American Revolution. It has its origins in Masonic imagery. The eye is the all-seeing eye of Providence, representing a Masonic view of the universal power, whether you call it God or providence. It was specifically chosen to symbolize the intervention of providence in favor of the American cause during the revolution. The Freemasons believed that there is a being that sees everything, that encompasses everything in its awareness, and many of the Founding Fathers were Masons. The current one-dollar design was introduced in 1935 on Silver Certificates at a time when the events and symbols of the American Revolution were on people’s minds—just after the 150th anniversary events and at a time of hardship (the Great Depression).”

  “What was that movie about?”

  —DEAN, after seeing the 1947 film noir Nightmare Alley with me

  Peter Bogdanovich, director of numerous movies, includingPaper Moon and The Last Picture Show:

  “I haven’t seen the picture since 1955, which is a few years ago. From 1952 through ’70, I kept a card on every movie I saw. I typed it up. I usually did it right after I saw it. I’d grade it and then I’d write something about it. If I saw it again, and I had a new opinion, I’d write the new opinion. I didn’t like [Nightmare Alley]. Would you like to hear it? I gave it a fair-minus rating. ‘Weird, not very believable carnival story mixed with vaguely surrealistic psychological mystery ending with the hero becoming a “geek” who must eat live chickens in the sideshow. Murky, badly acted, silly and pointless, it nevertheless evokes a rather fascinating atmosphere of nightmarish reality.’”

  “Why in exciting movies is the most exciting part always at the end?”

  —DEAN, after watching The Wind and the Lion, the 1975 adventure film starring Sean Connery and Candice Bergen

  John Milius, writer and director,The Wind and the Lion:

  “It’s like a piece of music—you have to reach a crescendo. Art has always been that way: music is that way, plays are that way. Fireworks always have the best stuff at the end, don’t they? Part of it is to keep you sitting there until the end of the movie; you think there will be more and more of that intensity, the movie has to top itself. It may even be primal. It’s like sex, because sex is that way, building, and we are so driven by our primal urges. At the end of The Wind and the Lion, I threw in everything—you had Germans with spiked helmets, the horses charging. But the real ending is after that, when Connery’s character escapes and he’s riding his horse and he leans down and takes the rifle from the kid. That is sort of the high point; you can’t go any further.

  “I find today whenever I see a film the action goes on forever, and it is all overdone. I remember on my first film, Dillinger, I had these guys blazing away with machine guns, and buildings were falling down, and there were bullet hits and bodies flying and splattering blood, and I realized that a little of that goes a long way. You can’t have an awful lot because you become sated very quickly; it loses its impact.”

  ME: “I just have to ask: Sean Connery’s Scottish accent. It seemed so incongruous, coming from an Arab, when he first speaks. After that you don’t notice. Did you discuss his accent during casting? While you were planning the film?”

  “We spent about six weeks having him trained to speak in an Arab manner, with an Arab accent. But after that, when he spoke to me in an Arab accent, all I heard was a Scottish burr. Nothing had changed. So I just figured that whoever taught his character to speak English was a Scot. I remember one of the reviews—my movies never got good reviews—in which John Simon just couldn’t get past Sean Connery’s accent. I realized that there was no point worrying about what these guys said. I became immunized to reviews.”

  “What movie played the longest in theaters?”

  —ELLA HESTER, age eight, Brooklyn, New York

  Sid Ganis, president, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California:

  “I’d say it’s Gone With the Wind. Over the years, since it opened in the late 1930s, it’s been revived many, many times, including ten years ago when they restored the negative. They didn’t keep these kinds of statistics when it first came out and the industry was much different: a theatrical run was the only run—there wasn’t television, and even when there was television, at first, there were still no movies on television. There was no VHS and certainly no DVD and cable and that stuff. The main form of distribution for movies was in a movie theater. So movies were in the theater much longer.”

  ME: “Do you think it has anything to do with the movie itself?”

  “Yes, yes. There is something about Go
ne With the Wind that is absolutely captivating: the look of the movie, the sound of the movie and, when you get into it, the story of the movie. Two or three months ago I happened to come across it on television somewhere in the middle, and I didn’t leave for another hour and a half. It’s iconic, but iconic for all the right reasons: it is splendid storytelling, it is splendid moving-picture fare.”

  “Why do grown-ups get to do what they want?”

  —MARLEY-ROSE LIBBURD, age five, Brooklyn, New York

  Nathan L. Hecht, senior justice, Supreme Court of Texas:

  “It only seems that way to young people because adults make all the rules. Actually, the law applies more strictly to adults than minors. All states and most countries set an age, usually between eighteen and twenty-one, below which a person gets special treatment. Minors can’t be held to their contracts and are sometimes excused for injuring others. Minors who commit crimes are usually treated as delinquents and punished less severely than adults. The reason is that minors do not have the breadth of life’s experiences to appreciate the consequences of their choices. Adults do not have the same excuse. They can’t do whatever they want but must follow the law or pay the penalty. Part of being grown-up is making wise choices, so that what you want, what’s good for you and what the law allows are all the same things.”

  “Can thirteen-year-olds get their own apartments?”

  —LILY KOPPEL, age thirteen, Chicago

  Judy Roettig, executive vice president of the Chicagoland Apartment Association, a trade association representing landlords:

  “A thirteen-year-old can’t rent her own apartment because contract law dictates that the signatory on a lease must be eighteen years or older. Now here’s an interesting sidebar: should the landlord want to evict you, and you are thirteen years old, you are old enough to receive service of a notice of eviction. You have to be twelve or older to accept the notice. So thirteen-year-olds can’t pay the rent, but are old enough to accept notice if their parents don’t.”

  “Why do men wear ties?”

  —TONY MUIA, age three, Brooklyn, New York

  Massimo Ferragamo, chairman of the United States division of Salvatore Ferragamo, which sold 27,000 ties worldwide in 2005:

  “Men wear ties because it’s a convention imposed on them from a very early age. In fact, the convention of wearing something around one’s neck seems to have existed for hundreds of years. The tie is thought to be an evolution of the neck scarf, cravat, lace collar and bandanna, all of which have been worn by men at certain points in history. But what I find interesting about a tie is that it’s synonymous with the uniform, yet is one of the few ways a man can express his individuality when formally attired.”

  “Why does the chef wear that big white hat?”

  —DEAN

  Georges Perrier, chef and owner, Le Bec-Fin restaurant, Philadelphia (speaking with a very thick French accent that makes “hat” sound like “at”):

  “First of all, I think, in the old times we all wore hats for health reasons. And the chef de cuisine, his hat was higher and bigger, and the other ones were smaller. We call it a ‘toque.’ It shows he’s the boss, he’s in charge. And his hat would have—how you say?—pleats. Those pleats mean how many years he’s been in the restaurant, how old a chef he is. This is the old tradition but now it is a different story. In my restaurant I don’t wear a hat. I should, out of respect for my profession, but I don’t. When I go to meet the master chefs in France, when we all get together, then we wear our hats. I think it’s beautiful to see the chefs with their hats. But with me, the ceiling in my kitchen is low, so I can’t wear a tall hat. Everyone who works there, everyone in the kitchen, they wear a casket.”

  ME: “A casket?”

  “Yes, you know, a casket? Do you understand? Wait a minute. [He speaks in French to someone near him in the kitchen before coming back to the telephone.] I mean a cap. Everyone in the kitchen has to wear a cap. This is for sanitary reasons.”

  “Why do dancers change their clothes for the samba?”

  —CECE STURMAN, age three, Los Angeles, California, while watching Strictly Ballroom

  Carlinhos de Jesus, renowned samba dancer who choreographs the opening act of Mangueira, one of the most traditional samba schools to participate in Rio de Janeiro’s annual Carnival parade:

  “It depends on the style of samba they’re dancing. Brazilian sambistas, as the samba dancers are known there, practice two styles: the samba no pé, which literally means “foot samba,” and the samba de gafieira, or ballroom samba, which couples dance together in nightclubs, just like they would dance the rumba or the fox-trot. This is not the same samba that we see in international ballroom-dance competitions, though. The international ballroom samba doesn’t exist in Brazil and it really doesn’t look or sound at all like the Brazilian samba. It is, instead, a mix of Latin rhythms that was popularized abroad by Carmen Miranda, the Portuguese-Brazilian performer who sang and danced it on Broadway and in many Hollywood movies in the 1940s.

  “There’s no specific clothing for the samba no pé, but the women like to wear tight shirts and miniskirts so as to accentuate the movement of their legs and hips. Because this style is danced during the annual Carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro, the clothing will depend on the theme selected by each samba school that participates in the parade. The dancers wear costumes that are representative of the theme, like fish-shaped hats, for example, if the school is honoring something related to the ocean. For the samba de gafieira, the men wear striped T-shirts, panama hats and white linen suits that are evocative of Rio de Janeiro’s bohemians, while the women wear elegant dresses and high-heel shoes. These clothes are more elegant because the gafieira, or ballroom, is a social place—a place where a man would take a woman he likes to dance at night, to have a good time.

  “Dancers of the international ballroom samba are usually inspired by Carmen Miranda and her extravagant clothing: flowing skirt, tight bustier, platform shoes. These clothes are often pretty colorful, like the plastic fruits and birds that Carmen Miranda used to have on the turbans she wore in the movies and which are so characteristic of Brazil.”

  “Why do you have girl hair?”

  —TYLER KENT, age five, Pensauken, New Jersey, while eating in a diner with his uncle, who had a ponytail

  Carol Pershing, studio hairstylist, head of the hair department for HBO’sDeadwood, for which she won an Emmy:

  “Men used to have long hair because they didn’t always have barbers and it wasn’t easy to get their hair cut. In England, they used to have the curls and they were also very coiffed and stuff. At the time of Deadwood, in the old American West, they would just let it grow and grow and grow. There was a barber, and a lot of times they would go in for special occasions and get their beards trimmed or cut or their hair cut, but it wasn’t done weekly; they barely took a bath once a week. Grooming themselves was not a big thing. When hair got shorter, in the twenties, it was because of lice; they started cutting the hair really down because people would get lice. When it got longer in the sixties, it just was part of that hippie thing, of kind of letting yourself go and doing your own thing and not conforming. Really, shorter hair represents being a little more uptight. But some men just like having long hair, the feel of it. You can also put it in a ponytail, where it is kept under control but the person’s other side—their fun side—is there, too; they are more individual, into their own thing.”

  “Why can’t I pick my nose in front of other people?”

  —ELLIOT APPLEBAUM, age seven, La Jolla, California

  Peter Post, director of the Emily Post Institute, and great-grandson of Emily Post, who first published her seminal guide to etiquette in 1922:

  “Because it’s gross. Why is it gross? Well, what’s gross is that you are taking something gooey and disgusting out of your nose, and then you have to do something with it. If you eat it, you are going to make other people’s stomachs turn upside down. If you stick it under a table, it
’s pretty grotesque—people are going to see it, touch it, feel it in the future. Finally, even if you use a tissue and get it off your finger, your finger is going to touch other people. The problem is, when we pick our nose, we think we’ve done it very surreptitiously—nobody saw it, so it’s okay. But usually somebody sees it, and from other people’s perspective it’s really vile.

  “The easiest thing to do is just to excuse yourself and do it in the privacy of a bathroom or anyplace where you won’t force other people to watch. We are basically social animals. We like to get along with other people. And part of getting along with other people—and this is the core essence of what etiquette is all about—is treating people with consideration and respect and honesty. And the problem with picking your nose in front of other people is that it can make them uncomfortable. Etiquette is really about building relationships, and if we want to have a great relationship with people, we should temper some of that picking of the nose. That’s why we have table manners: not to gross out people while we eat. Same concept. We don’t chew with our mouths open because nobody wants to see that mash of goo chewing around in our mouths.”

  “Who invented homework?”

  —STEPHEN DINISO, age ten, Floral Park, New York

  Steven Schlossman, Ph.D., Department of History, Carnegie Mellon University:

  “We know very little about the origins of homework, except to say that for hundreds of years it was a staple of upper-grammar and secondary schooling, and that it was integral to the predominant style of teaching that stressed drill, memorization and recitation; children had to prepare furiously the night before to ‘say their lessons’ in school.

  “A more interesting question for modern kids might be: Who invented homework for very young children? If there is anything radically new on the educational scene today, it is the idea that homework is as good for children in the early grades as for students in high school. Indeed, nowadays homework assignments in kindergarten are increasingly common.