Children

"¢ Moe Howard of Three Stooges fame had long, lovely curls when he was a child, with the result that he fought a lot of kids who teased him about his curls after he started attending school. When he entered kindergarten, a kind teacher, Mrs. Warner, seated him near a girl with even longer curls than his own so that his curls would not be so noticeable. She also tried "“ without success "“ to get his mother to give him a regular boy's haircut. Eventually, Moe got tired of fighting and instead took the verbal abuse. He did make a friend of a new boy in the neighborhood whose name was Donald McMann, who stood up for him when a bully taunted him about his curls. Don knocked the bully out with one punch, and after the bully regained consciousness, Don forced him to apologize to Moe in front of several children who had watched the bullying. Finally, Moe himself cut off his long curls, resulting in the bowl-shaped haircut that later made him famous all over the world. When his mother saw his new haircut, she told him, "œThank God you did it. I didn't have the courage."

"¢ One of syndicated columnist Connie Schultz' treasured possessions is a quilt that her great-grandmother made from Connie's mother's school clothing. When Connie was a child, her mother would put the quilt over their laps and then tell her about all the squares: "This was my favorite Sunday school dress. This was my cheerleading skirt. This was the blouse I wore the day I met your father." By the way, Connie's mother had worked as a nurse's aide, and she often spoke to people about their ailments while waiting at a pharmacy for prescriptions to be filled. Ms. Schultz remembers, "When you are 12, you do not want your mother pondering for all the world to hear the possible causes behind strangers' bloating. Lord. But oh, the joy on her face when we'd run into them again and they'd hug her for their cures."

"¢ Jim Carrey was funny even as a youngster. One of his "acts" was to put a lot of colored candies in his mouth, chew them up, and then pretend to vomit. His very young audience loved it. In school, he once got in trouble when his teacher saw him mocking some musicians on a record. Fortunately, all turned out well. Thinking to embarrass him, his teacher ordered him to do what he was doing in front of the class. Young Jim did, and he was so funny that his teacher invited to do the act at the school's Christmas assembly. And when his mother became ill, Jim's comedy cheered her up "“ sometimes at odd times. Occasionally, his father would wake him up and say, "Sorry to wake you up in the middle of the night, but your mother and I could use a good laugh. You're on in five."

"¢ Sid Fleischman started out writing books for adults, but he changed the audience he wrote for because of something his older daughter, Jane, said after she had gotten an autograph by children's book author Leo Politi at the Santa Monica Public Library. Jane's mother said, "Daddy writes books, too," and Jane replied, "Yes, but no one reads his books." Very quickly, he became very successful as a writer of books for children. In his first children's book, "Mr. Mysterious and Company," he named the child characters after his own children: Jane, Paul and Anne. Like Mr. Politi, Mr. Fleischman signed autographs at the Santa Monica Public Library. Standing in line to get his autograph was his 7-year-old daughter, Anne. Mr. Fleischman says, "I knew I had arrived."

"¢ Karen Hesse, Newbery Award-winning author of "Out of the Dust," was a sickly and whiny child. Her mother even gave her gold stars on the days that Karen did not cry, but Karen earned very few gold stars. Still, Karen was eager to try new things. At around age 8, she tried to fly, launching herself into space from the top of some stairs leading to the second floor of her house. She made it almost all the way down the stairs before hitting the floor. Encouraged by this seeming success, she wanted to try flying out of a second-floor window, but fortunately a neighbor saw her sitting on the window ledge. The neighbor telephoned Karen's mother, who stopped the flying attempt.

"¢ David Letterman was an original even in high school. For an English assignment he was required to write about an important event in a person's life, so he wrote about a man who had swallowed paper towels "“ his way of committing suicide. While working at a grocery store, David once put cornhusks in a box of cornflakes and put it on the shelf. Not everyone was impressed by him "“ or his sense of humor. His high-school guidance counselor, Marilyn Dearing, wrote that he was "a run-of-the-mill ordinary average kid." In an interview after he became famous, she said, "I didn't think David was funny then, and I still don't think he is funny."

"¢ When tennis star Venus Williams was growing up, her coach and father, Richard, claims to have used some unusual coaching methods. For example, he says that he used to pay her $50 every time she lost. That way, she didn't put undue pressure on herself to win. According to her father, at that time Venus "had more 50-dollar bills than she knew what to do with." In addition, as a 15-year-old, Venus had an unusual method to keep in shape: She would race the family's three pet dogs. She said at the time, "I give myself a head start, and then they chase after me. They beat me "“ they're really fast."

"¢ American movies are seen all over the world, and children watch them. Groucho Marx once visited Dornum, Germany, where his mother had been born. An 8-year-old boy asked, in German, where Groucho was from. Groucho replied, "Chicago," and because the boy had seen lots of Chicago gangster movies, he pretended that his hand was a pistol, pointed it at Groucho, and said, "Bang! Bang! Bang!"

"¢ "When I was a kid, my parents moved a lot "“ but I always found them." "“ Rodney Dangerfield.