Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader (7 page)

In 2002 Michelle Glen, 41, was scuba diving off the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean when she was attacked by a shark. The seven-foot Caribbean reef shark bit her arm, back, and shoulder, leaving her with shredded muscles and a severed major artery. With her that day were her husband and a friend. Her husband is an orthopedic surgeon; the friend is a vascular surgeon—who specializes in damaged arteries. He was able to reach into Glen’s shredded shoulder, find the severed artery, and halt the bleeding until emergency crews arrived and flew her to Miami’s Ryder Trauma Center. Doctors there said it was the “worst shark bite” they’d ever seen, and that Glen probably wouldn’t have made it if the two doctors, especially the friend, hadn’t been with her.

In 1995 Terry Cottle, 33, of Charleston, South Carolina, shot himself. He died in the hospital, but not before his heart could be
transplanted into 56-year-old Sonny Sugarman, who was suffering from congestive heart failure. Thirteen years later, Sugarman shot and killed
him
self. Worse than that: Cheryl Cottle, the widow of the first victim, had married Sugarman after meeting him through the organ donor program. Both of her husbands—who had the same heart in their bodies—had shot and killed themselves.

In 2004 alternative-country singer Neko Case was asked to perform on the soundtrack to a documentary about women on the professional wrestling circuit in the 1940s and ’50s. Director Ruth Leitman gave Case some rough video footage to view for inspiration. In an interview, one of the “lady wrestlers,” Ella Waldek, mentioned that her original last name was Shevchenko. Case yelled at the TV—“Hey! That’s my name!” Waldek went on to say that she was born in Custer, Washington. That’s where Case was from, too! She got on the phone to her grandmother, and, sure enough, Ella Waldek was Case’s aunt. The two met later that year and have been friends ever since. “I always thought there must be some tough ladies in the family hiding somewhere,” she told
Entertainment Weekly
. “I felt so proud.”

In August 2007, Londoner Michael Dick went to the nearby town of Sudbury to find his daughter, Lisa, who had moved there with her mother when she was a baby. Dick had seen her only occasionally as she grew up; the last time was a decade earlier. After searching the city’s election records without success, he went to the local newspaper, the
Free Press
, and asked for their help. The paper’s photographer took him outside and snapped a shot of him, and Dick went home to London. A couple of hours after the paper hit the streets, Dick got a call. It was Lisa. She had seen the photo of her dad—and she had seen herself and her mother
in the photo
, too. They happened to be across the street from where her father was photographed, and ended up in the photo. “I was completely shocked,” she said. “We’d been standing in that exact place where the picture was taken about a minute earlier, and you can see us in the picture. It is incredible.” She met up with her dad later that night. “He’s promised to keep in touch,” she said.

Some present-day philosophers chime in on the human condition
.

“No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.”

—
Dave Barry

“What we dwell on is who we become.”

—
Oprah Winfrey

“As you get older, the pickings get slimmer, but the people don’t.”

—
Carrie Fisher

“If you’re going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now.”

—
Marie Osmond

“Oppressed groups are not, generally speaking, people who stand firmly together. No, sadly, they subdivide among themselves and fight like hell.”

—
J. K. Rowling

“Most things I worry about never happen anyway.”

—
Tom Petty

“Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.”

—
Mel Brooks

“The true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good.”

—
Ann Landers

“The less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudices.”

—
Clint Eastwood

“It’s all right letting yourself go as long as you can get yourself back.”

—
Mick Jagger

“The most important things happen when you stop looking for them.”

—
Phil Donahue

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

—
Alice Walker

“If everything is under control, you are going too slow.”

—
Mario Andretti

“The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.”

—
Tom Clancy

In past
Bathroom Readers
, we’ve written about bog snorkeling, cheese rolling, and pooh sticking. Here’s this year’s crop of crazy sports
.

M
ULLET TOSSING
Where It Originated:
The Florida/Alabama border
How It’s Played:
Every April, several thousand participants pay $18 each to throw a mullet (the fish, not the haircut) from a 10-foot circle on a beach in Alabama across the state line into Pensacola, Florida. “Most people take the fish and roll it up like a baseball, tight as they can,” explains Barbara Burns, a bartender at the FloraBama Package & Lounge, which has hosted the charity event—followed by a big party—since 1984. The record holder: Josh Serotum, who threw a mullet 189'8" in 2004. (After the competition, pelicans swoop in and eat all of the mullets.)

Where It Originated:
Toronto, Canada

How It’s Played:
It’s kind of like the sleepover variety of the game…only much more brutal. The Pillow Fight League (PFL) consists solely of women and resembles pro wrestling—except these fights aren’t staged, and the combatants hit each other with pillows. Wearing bizarre costumes (as well as mouth guards, knee pads, and elbow pads), fighters with names like “Betty Clock’er,” “Polly Esther,” “Mickey Dismantle,” and “Lady Die” duke it out in front of hundreds of spectators at clubs and ballrooms across the United States and Canada. If a five-minute bout ends without one fighter successfully pinning her opponent’s shoulders down (with a pillow), then a panel of three PFL judges chooses the winner based on “style, stamina, and the Eye of the Tiger.”

SEPAK TAKRAW

Where It Originated:
Malaysia

How It’s Played:
The word
sepak
means “kick” in Malay;
takraw
means “ball” in Thai. And this 500-year-old kickball game is arguably the most difficult sport in the world to master. Resembling a combination of volleyball, soccer, and Cirque du Soleil,
two teams of three players each face off on a court with a net in the middle. Like volleyball, they have to keep a ball in the air, scoring a point when the other team lets it hit the ground. Unlike volleyball, players may use only their heads, legs, and bodies—no hands. So at breakneck speeds they do front flips, backflips, and an array of amazing bodily contortions, just to get to the softball-size ball and keep it in the air. It’s a major sport in southeast Asia, and is becoming more popular in the Western world each year.

Where It Originated:
Kirkwall, in Scotland’s Orkney Islands
How It’s Played:
Ba’ matches have taken place on Christmas and New Year’s Day every year since the 1600s. Starting from the center of town, 300 men divide into the “Uppies,” from the north side, who try to get the three-pound leather ball—or ba’—a mile away to a designated wall while the “Doonies,” from the south side, try to get it into the frigid sea. The jumble of men, called a
scrum
(taken from rugby), shove, punch, and kick each other until someone wins—often battling well into the night. There are no rules and no referees, and no such thing as “out of bounds.” The sport is so destructive that townies board up their doors and windows beforehand, as past scrums have laid waste to everything from cars to spectators to cemeteries. The winner hosts a giant party for both teams at his house (with beer donated by the local grocer) and gets to display the ba’ in his living-room window for the rest of his life.

Where It Originated:
Auckland, New Zealand

How It’s Played:
This isn’t exactly a sport, just a dizzying outdoor activity. A person (the “Zorbonaut”) is strapped into a harness inside a 10-foot inflatable clear plastic sphere (the Zorb), which is then released from the top of a hill. The Zorb rolls and rolls until the green grass and blue sky meld into a blue-green blur. After reaching speeds of nearly 30 mph, the big ball gently rolls to a stop at the bottom of the ½-mile-long course, more of which are popping up around the world. As stomach-turning as the sport may seem, according to Zorb inventors Dwayne van der Sluis and Andrew Akers, out of the 100,000 Zorb rides they’ve witnessed over the past 15 years, no one’s ever thrown up…
inside
the ball.

The verdict is in! Court transquips make for some of the best bathroom reading there is. These were actually spoken, word for word, in a court of law
.

Defense:
Your Honor, I have a short witness.

Judge:
How short?

Defense:
It’s Mr. Long.

Judge:
Put Long on.

Prosecutor:
As long as he’s short.

Lawyer:
Where was the officer in relation to you when you were struck by the car?

Witness:
To my left.

Lawyer:
How far to your left?

Witness:
I don’t really remember. I was getting run over at the time.

Clerk:
Please state your name and spell your last name.

Judge:
She has already been sworn.

Clerk:
I am sorry, Your Honor. She looks different.

Witness:
I ate.

Q:
Do you drink alcohol?

A:
No, sir.

Q:
Are you a teetotaler?

A:
Not really. Just coffee once in a while.

Lawyer:
Were you the lone ranger on duty that night?

Witness:
I was a park ranger on duty that night.

Lawyer:
I mean the only one, the lone—

Witness:
You mean alone?

Lawyer:
Alone.

Witness:
Yes, I was.

Q:
I notice from the rehabilitation reports that you were recently in Mexico, correct?

A:
I did not go to Mexico. I went to Tijuana.

Lawyer:
Did your son tell you what day it was?

Witness:
No, he didn’t tell me, but I myself knew.

Lawyer:
Did your granddaughter talk to you about it?

Witness:
No, sometimes when I’m sober and working around the house, I remember these things.

Federal judge:
This seems like a fairly simple problem. Let’s not make a federal case out of it.

Random facts about the world’s favorite milk product
.

• Cheese is popular in most parts of the world. A notable exception: China. Invading Tatars and Mongols ate dairy products, so the Chinese associated cheese with the enemy.

• Most-consumed cheese worldwide: Cheddar.

• Six cheeses named after the European cities where they were first made: Parmesan (Parma, Italy), Romano (Rome), Gouda (Netherlands), Edam (Netherlands), Cheddar (England), and Camembert (France).

• Cheddar is naturally white. It’s dyed orange with annatto seed, which comes from the tropical bixa tree.

• At cheese tastings, testers freshen and neutralize their mouths with gingerbread.

• According to the USDA, there are only 18 basic kinds of cheese: Brick, Edam, Whey, Camembert, Cheddar, Gouda, Cottage, Cream, Neufchatel, Hand, Limburger, Roquefort, Trappist, Romano, Parmesan, Swiss, Provolone, and Sapsago.

• Cheese can be made from the milk of most mammals, including reindeer, buffalo, camels, llamas, horses, donkeys, zebras, and yak.