EVERYTHING
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KID
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“One night, my 3-year-old asked me if she could sleep in my bed. I told her no. She said, “That’s not fair! Why does Daddy get to sleep in your bed?” READ MORE
Editor's Note
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Art Linkletter ought to know Full disclosure. In building OC Family Magazine, we always look for ways to better reflect family life. Some time back, I would drive into work chuckling at something one of my three boys had said. And I thought of Art Linkletter, who gained a place in the American icon-o-sphere beginning more than a half-century ago by hosting a radio, then radio-television, then a TV show called “House Party” that had a segment, “Kids Say the Darndest Things,” for which he is best-known. Some of the kids in my fourth-grade class got to go on the show one morning. So my own children were making me laugh, and the stories were getting no further than the inside of my morning commute. That just did not work. At Managing Editor Sandy Bennett’s urging, we created a special page in January 2002 that comes from you, the parents, via the wisdom and humor of your children. We call it Kid Quips, and Mr. Linkletter, I presume, would be proud. The 94-year-old will be honored Sept. 19 in Orange County for his various achievements that include raising awareness about drug abuse, Alzheimer’s disease, physical fitness and other healthcare matters. The nonprofit Ethics in America Program will be held at The Grove of Anaheim. Information and tickets: passkeys.org. Linkletter recently recounted in a phone interview from near his home in Bel-Air how he interviewed 27,000 children over 26 years, ages 4-10. A best-selling book (“Kids Say The Darndest Things”) and other books came out of his 5- to 6-minute interactions on his daily show. He got the idea in the late 1930s, while doing radio in San Francisco. He had brought home a recording device and was tinkering with it when his then-kindergartner came home from school. He recorded Jack telling him that school was no fun because “I can’t read and I can’t write, and they won’t let me talk.” Playing that on the air created a local stir. “People said, ‘Oh, what a wonderful thing! A child telling you what he thinks.’ I thought, it’s a novel idea. “Every time I meet a schoolteacher, particularly kindergarten and first grade, they say, ‘I’m a teacher, and I could write a book just like yours.’” Linkletter recalls interviewing a little girl: “I said, ‘What’s the most fun you have at your house?’ ‘I get to wake up my little brother; I take the cat down, open the door and throw the cat in.’ “I asked, ‘How is that funny?’ ‘He sleeps with the dog.’” Linkletter is chagrined that parents – often struggling as a two-income family – don’t get to spend as much time with their children as they did when he began his first radio show with this format during World War II. It’s an interesting point, because one of my rationale for creating Kid Quips was to also chronicle some of the wonderful things my children have said over the years. When there is room, I put in their comments – thoughts of theirs that otherwise might forever be lost. It is the regular responses during everyday life that make our Kid Quips work. And it is what worked for Linkletter, too, as he drew in schoolchildren chosen by teachers, not professional actors with memorized lines. “I invented children to be just children,” he says. Linkletter, who works mostly on elder care issues these days, says he travels 100,000 miles every six months. And it never fails that some adult will come up and ask: “Do you remember me? I was on your show when I was 5.” So, it’s really about capturing the innocence of children, is it not? “That was the whole thing,” Linkletter says. His show last aired in 1970; Bill Cosby picked up on the theme for a season in 2000. By the way, among my favorite Kid Quips: “I asked Emmy how old she was. ‘2 in a row.’” Emily, 2 1/2, of Irvine “During a funeral, the priest paused while reading a prayer from the Bible. ‘“Turn the page!’” Dominic, 2 1/2, of San Juan Capistrano “While the audience sang, “God Bless America,” she whispered in my ear: ‘Did America sneeze?’” Jillian, 4 1/2, of Costa Mesa And, as I’ve found with my oldest, not all things funny and profound come from the mouths of our youngest thinkers. My 12-year-old told me during this past school year, “I think I’ll take homework off for Lent.” If you have a favorite, by all means, send one in. (Go to our Kid Quips department in this issue for online instructions.) Craig Reem Executive Editor |
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