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    Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Tales to Inspire
    Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Tales to Inspire
    Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Tales to Inspire
    Ebook349 pages4 hours

    Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Tales to Inspire

    By Bathroom Readers' Institute

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    About this ebook

    Enjoy the softer side of Uncle John! Filled with hundreds of pages of extraordinary, uplifting, and motivational stories, this is the ultimate ‘feel good’ book.

    Down in the dumps? Maybe you need a little inspiration, courtesy of Uncle John. Your friends at the Bathroom Readers’ Institute have been working hard to assemble the most uplifting collection of humor interest stories to date. Read about extraordinary moments in ordinary lives and be awed by affecting tales. So if your heart needs some warming, Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Tales to Inspire is a truly unique celebration of the human spirit that is guaranteed to lift your mood.

     

    - Louis Braille's Amazing Gift
    - The True Story of Pay It Forward
    - Margaret Knight, the Female "Edison"
    - The Inspiring Origin of the Boy Scouts
    - Happy Accidents
    - And much much more
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPortable Press
    Release dateJun 1, 2013
    ISBN9781607109150
    Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Tales to Inspire
    Author

    Bathroom Readers' Institute

    The Bathroom Readers' Institute is a tight-knit group of loyal and skilled writers, researchers, and editors who have been working as a team for years. The BRI understands the habits of a very special market—Throne Sitters—and devotes itself to providing amazing facts and conversation pieces.

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      Book preview

      Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Tales to Inspire - Bathroom Readers' Institute

      INTRODUCTION

      WELCOME to this very special edition of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader .

      If you’re new to our series, then allow us to introduce ourselves. The Bathroom Readers’ Institute is a group of dedicated trivia nuts living in the small mountain town of Ashland, Oregon. Over the two decades that we’ve been bringing you Bathroom Readers, we’ve uncovered many uplifting stories. That gave us the idea of creating an entire book that celebrates incredible people and achievements.

      Just look around you; there are so many. For example…

      • Everyday folks who do extraordinary things. such as the mysterious driver who always pays the toll for the five cars behind her, the man who sold his house and then used the money to buy a community hall for the Girl Scouts, and the city bus driver who conducts sing-alongs with his passengers.

      • Disabled people who refuse to be limited by their physical limitations, like the blind man who helped millions learn how to read and write, the high school wrestler who figured out how to win even though he has no arms, and the scientist who can’t move or talk, but changed the way we view the universe.

      • Wealthy people who give back, such as the hockey star who donated his entire salary to help troubled teens, the doctor in India who invented a simple toilet that saved millions of lives, and the robber baron who gave away his entire fortune to promote literacy.

      • Kids who notice a problem and then get to work trying to fix it. There’s the group of high school students who dress up as superheroes and help out their neighbors, the boy who rescued hundreds of old computers from the landfill and placed them into schools, and the little girl whose big idea led to the planting of a million trees.

      • This book is more than just amazing people. We show you natural wonders, like the tortoise who adopted the hippo, our intricate relationship to the universe, and the lessons that ants can teach us. You’ll find architectural achievements, like the village made out of bottles and the castle that took one man 70 years to build (all by himself). And then there are fables, proverbs, jokes, and words of wisdom from the likes of the Buddha, Einstein, Helen Keller, and P-Funk.

      While we’re talking about inspirational people, here’s a great big THANK YOU to the writers and researchers at the Bathroom Readers’ Institute who poured their hearts into making this book: Jay, Brian, Thom, John, Amy, Jahnna, Malcolm, Angie, Jef F., and Jolly Jeff Cheek.

      And finally…thank you. We know we say this in every book, but we can’t help it. The love and enthusiasm you’ve shown for this quirky book series has inspired us to keep doing the very best we can to keep you entertained. Here’s to many more years of bathroom reading bliss.

      So, until next time,

      Go with the Flow!

      Uncle John, the BRI staff, and Porter the Wonder Dog

      YOU’RE MY INSPIRATION

      Everybody is inspired by someone. Who inspires you?

      STEVE MARTIN. As a boy in the 1950s, Martin loved watching The Red Skelton Show on TV. Amazed by Skelton’s power to make people laugh, he wanted that power, too. How’d he get it? By learning every Skelton skit word for word and then performing them for his schoolmates.

      CORETTA SCOTT KING. King was inspired by Eleanor Roosevelt’s campaign for global human rights. The First Lady once said, No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Those words stayed with King her whole life, and reminded her to never be afraid to stand up for what she believed.

      HENRY FORD completed his first self-propelled vehicle, the gas-engine powered Quadricycle, in 1896. That same year he met his boyhood hero, Thomas Edison, and told him about the Quad. Edison, who was working on an electric vehicle, banged his fist on the table and said, Young man, you have it! Your car is self contained and carries its own power plant. Years later Ford said, That bang on the table was worth worlds to me.

      STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN. One of Vaughan’s first influences was blues guitarist Buddy Guy. Yet while Vaughan went on to fame in the 1980s, Guy fell on hard times and nearly quit the business. Until one day when Guy heard Vaughan’s playing. He was so amazed that he decided to pick up his own guitar again…unaware that the man who inspired him to return to music was the same man that he inspired to start playing in the first place.

      RYAN’S WELL

      Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.—Jane Goodall

      ALL WELL AND GOOD

      Ryan Hreljac of Kemptville, Ontario, says he’s just a normal kid, but those who know him consider him to be remarkable. In 1998, when Ryan was six years old, he learned from his first-grade teacher that hundreds of thousands of African children die every year from drinking contaminated water. His teacher further explained that in Africa a single penny would buy a pencil, 25 cents would cover the cost of 175 vitamins, 60 cents would supply two months’ worth of medicine, and $70 would pay for a well.

      Determined to help, Ryan worked for four months doing household chores to earn the money to buy a well, but found that $70 would only pay for a small hand pump. He’d have to raise $2,000 to buy a real well. That didn’t stop Ryan; he continued to raise money—from neighbors, other children, and foundations. By the time he was seven, not only had Ryan raised the $2,000 for a hand-dug well, he’d promised the Canadian Physicians for Aid and Relief that he would raise another $25,000 to buy the drilling equipment needed to build more wells in Africa. And he kept his promise.

      In 2001 Ryan funded his own charitable organization, Ryan’s Well Foundation. One of the most important things we do, he says, is talk about the role each of us must play, no matter who we are or how old we are, in making the world a better place. Since then the foundation has raised more than $1 million and funded the building of 197 wells.

      LOCAL HEROES

      Here are three stories of ordinary people who did extraordinary things.

      WE DELIVER

      Barely a week into his new job as a cab driver, 37-year-old Nedal Haddad of Chicago got a passenger he’ll never forget. A woman and her two daughters climbed in, saying that they needed to get to the hospital fast—one of the daughters was very pregnant. But as they were zipping through traffic, Haddad heard the words every cabbie dreads: I think I’m going to have the baby! He immediately pulled over to the side of the road. The woman’s mother and sister were too panicked to assist, so Haddad climbed into the backseat and took over. Without any medical training whatsoever (except for watching a show about childbirth on the Discovery Channel), he then proceeded to deliver the baby. Paramedics arrived soon after and took the new mom and her healthy baby girl to the hospital. Birthday gift: In addition to delivering the child, Haddad waived the $60 cab fare.

      GOOD CALL

      Telemarketers may annoy you at dinnertime, but one man was glad to get the call. Crystal Rozell, who works for Consumer Direct Marketing in Saratoga Springs, New York, made a random sales call to Stanley Bauch, an 85-year-old man in Ridott, Illinois. Bauch was somewhat incoherent, but Rozell could make out enough of what he was saying to understand that he was in serious trouble, and she alerted police. Apparently Bauch had fallen near his rural home and, after spending a freezing December night outside, had crawled back to his living room. He could reach the phone but couldn’t make an outgoing call. The next day, after he’d spent 17 hours without food or water, Rozell was the first person to call him. She kept him talking until paramedics arrived to take him to the hospital. Bauch was dehydrated but otherwise okay. The telemarketing company did one more good deed: They gave Bauch a free subscription to a medical alert network, in case he falls again.

      GREAT CATCH

      On a cold December morning in the Bronx, New York, a fire broke out in the kitchen of a third-story apartment. Felix Vasquez, the superintendent of the building, was in the street when he heard screams coming from above. He looked up and saw a woman holding something out the window, but couldn’t tell what it was. The woman, Tracinda Foxe, recognized her super 30 feet below and tossed the object to him. It was only when the object was in the air that Vasquez realized what it was: Foxe’s three-month-old baby.

      She threw the baby, Vasquez recalled, and that’s when I ran in and caught him just in time, just like a football. I gave him mouth-to-mouth, and he coughed, and then started yelling and crying.

      Firefighters rushed into the building and rescued the mother, who was soon reunited with her baby. It’s just a miracle, a miracle, Vasquez said. (It may also have had something to do with the fact that Vasquez’s position on his softball team is…catcher.)

      ***

      Pray indeed, but get to work!—Mexican proverb

      TAILS TO INSPIRE

      Animals sometimes teach us what it really means to be human.

      BUMPUS TO THE RESCUE

      In June 1996, firefighters in the Alaskan wilderness found an orange cat that had been horribly burned by a wildfire and was missing his hind feet. The injured cat, nicknamed Bumpus, wasn’t expected to survive…but he did. And not only that, he taught himself to walk again. Eventually Bumpus was adopted by Sharon, a fire-and-rescue volunteer who took him home with her to Missouri, where she worked for the local Humane Society, caring for sick kittens. That’s how Bumpus met Cheerio, a kitten who was traumatized by the recent loss of one of his legs. Cheerio couldn’t walk, cried constantly, bit anything that came near him, and hid under the bed in a secluded room. Sharon thought Bumpus might help, and sure enough, when she let him into Cheerio’s room, he immediately ran to the crying kitten, wrapped his paws around him, and licked his face. The crying soon stopped and Cheerio began to purr. This went on for weeks. Eventually Cheerio regained his strength, learned to walk again, and went to live with a new family. Since then, whenever Sharon gets an especially despondent kitten, she sends in her trusted assistant: Bumpus.

      FAIR ELLEN

      Fair Ellen was a golden collie, born blind in 1921. Her master, Albert Terhune, was going to put her out of her misery until his wife pointed out that Fair Ellen was in no misery at all—she was the liveliest one of the litter. Fair Ellen galloped like the rest of the puppies, but after a few steps she’d run into something—a food dish or fence wires. Each time, she’d right herself and move on, tail wagging as if it were some kind of game. Amazingly, she never collided with the same obstacle twice. In less than a week, she could run across the yard without hitting anything. And within a few weeks, she could traverse the entire 40-acre property, having run into each tree, rock, and shrub only once. She could run at full speed and then stop six inches from a wall. She even taught herself to swim. In her 12 years, most people who met Fair Ellen didn’t even know she was blind.

      ROULETTE

      In 1970 Joe Fulda was drafted into military service and shipped off to Vietnam. He left behind a wife, a son, and a one-year-old poodle named Roulette. He promised everyone—including the dog—that he’d write often. Joe kept his promise and sent home letters two or three times a week. But his wife, Mycki, complained that weeks would pass without any letters from him. They were puzzled…until Mycki finally realized what was going on.

      If she was actually there to catch the mail when it came through the door slot, there was likely to be a letter from Joe. But if she wasn’t there and picked it up off the floor later, there was never a letter. And she noticed that Roulette became agitated when Mycki got to the mail slot first.

      One day Mycki hid behind a wall when the mail arrived, and watched as Roulette sniffed around the stack of mail, then pulled out a single envelope and dropped it behind the living-room couch. Mycki moved the couch…and discovered a trove of letters from Joe. That’s when she realized what had happened to the missing letters: Roulette was keeping them for herself.

      OLD MAN HOWARD

      For kids in this town, the ultimate dare was to set foot on the Howard Farm. Old Man Howard hated kids …or did he?

      GRUMPY OLD MAN

      Wesley Howard was born and raised in a ramshackle house on a 68-acre farm in Medford, Oregon. After his parents died, he remained there alone and over the decades, earned a reputation as a miser and recluse. He never got a phone or indoor plumbing, never married or had any children. His house became known as the creepy old Howard place.

      Like any haunted house, the Howard property was irresistible to children. They would poke around his barn and orchards; some would throw rocks or golf balls at his windows. Sometimes they’d sneak into his fields to pick grapes and peaches. But Old Man Howard chased them off. Often he’d run out with his shotgun and shoot rock salt at anyone who wandered onto his property. He particularly seemed to hate kids.

      For years, they thought Old Man Howard was the meanest man in Jackson County.

      MISUNDERSTOOD?

      But others saw a different side of Wesley Howard. Some of his neighbors regarded him as a private man who was constantly harassed by the neighborhood children. Howard had served on the local Citizens Planning Advisory Committee for 20 years and was fiercely concerned about land-use and development issues in the city of Medford. And he’d had a lifelong love of baseball.

      SURPRISE ENDING

      When 87-year-old Wesley Howard died of a stroke in March 2003, it came as no surprise to anyone that his home was filled with years of accumulated newspapers, toys, and baseball memorabilia. It certainly fit his hermit image. What did come as a surprise was that Old Man Howard was rich—very rich. Even more surprising: The reading of his will revealed that he’d left his entire estate—$ 11 million and his farm—to build a sports park for local children.

      The amazing gift (#58 on the list of 100 largest charitable donations of 2003) left local residents baffled, wondering whether anyone had known the real Wesley Howard. An editorial in the Medford Mail Tribune noted: We’ll never know if Wes Howard had a Scrooge-like epiphany, or if there was always a charitable soul hidden beneath his gruff exterior.

      HAVE A BALL

      Scrooge or not, Old Man Howard, who cared about his hometown and loved baseball, ensured that his estate would honor both. The Howard Memorial Sports Park, due to be built on the site of his old farm in 2007, will include fields for Little League baseball, as well as facilities for soccer, basketball, and volleyball. According to Howard’s attorney, He wanted to have his family name on the land, thinking especially of his parents, and to leave it for the benefit of young people. Even those kids he once chased off his property with a blast of rock salt.

      ***

      Look at people, recognize them, accept them as they are, without wanting to change them.

      —Helen Beginton

      SOUND ADVICE

      Some simple wisdom…so simple that we often overlook it.

      Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

      —André Gide

      Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.

      —Henri-Louis Bergson

      Sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.

      —Edward Albee

      We have to do the best we can. This is our sacred human responsibility.

      —Albert Einstein

      When the student is ready, the master appears.

      —Buddhist proverb

      Be the change that you want to see in the world.

      —Mahatma Gandhi

      If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.

      —Charlotte Brontë

      The three great essentials to achieving anything worthwhile are: first, hard work; second, stick-to-it-iveness; and third, common sense.

      —Thomas Edison

      When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.

      —Helen Keller

      GREAT SECOND ACTS

      Retirement at 65 is ridiculous. When I was 65 I still had pimples.—George Burns

      BOB UECKER

      First Act: Uecker was signed as a catcher with the Milwaukee Braves in 1956 and played for three teams over nine seasons. He retired in 1967 with a career batting average of .200.

      Second Act: Since 1971, he’s been the play-by-play announcer for the Milwaukee Brewers. On the air he honed the personality of a self-effacing, lovable loser and made fun of his terrible baseball career. He carried on the persona in commercials, nationally broadcast games, and dozens of appearances on The Tonight Show. He even starred on the ABC sitcom Mr. Belvedere in the 1980s. Uecker was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2001, and the Milwaukee Brewers retired a Bob Uecker jersey in 2005.

      JOSEPH CONRAD

      First Act: Born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857 in Poland, Conrad spent most of his early life at sea—first in the French merchant marines, then as a British sea captain. He sailed the world, even going up the Congo River in Africa. In 1894 he retired at age 36, married two years later, and had two children.

      Second Act: Conrad became a writer. He published his first book, Almayer’s Folly, at the age of 38. His novels (including Heart of Darkness, based on his trip up the Congo) are considered masterpieces of English literature, even though English was Conrad’s third language, after Polish and French.

      RICHARD FARNSWORTH

      First Act: Farnsworth started his career as a cowboy and rodeo rider, and then became a movie stuntman. Over 40 years he appeared in more than 300 films.

      Second Act: In midlife, Farnsworth stepped into the limelight as an actor. In 1976 he played the stagecoach driver in The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox and a year later, at the age of 57, he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance in Comes a Horseman. After performances in The Natural and The Silver Fox, at 80 he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his final performance in the 1999 film The Straight Story—the oldest actor to get such a nomination.

      JIM MORRIS

      First Act: In January 1983, pitcher Jim Morris was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers. He played in the minor leagues for a few seasons, but after suffering multiple injuries to his throwing arm, he retired in 1989. Only 25 years old, Morris returned to his home state of Texas, where he became a high school baseball coach.

      Second Act: Morris’s team wasn’t very good, so to motivate his players, he told them that if they won the district title, he’d try out for the major leagues again. It worked. The team won and Morris tried out for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. In spite of being 35 and having had so many injuries, he could still throw a 98 MPH fastball. The team signed him, and on September 18, 1999, he pitched against the Texas Rangers, striking out his first batter on four pitches. He played in 25 more games until his old arm injuries caught up with him, and he had to retire for a second time in 2000.

      Third Act: His story was made into the 2002 film The Rookie.

      LADYBUGS

      The folks in the previous article prove that you’re never too old to do great things. Hannah proves that you’ve never too young.

      IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEM

      In 2001, five-year-old Hannah Taylor saw a homeless man eating out of a garbage can on a cold day in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and it made her sick to her stomach. A few weeks later, she saw a woman carrying everything she owned piled in a grocery cart. As she noticed more and more homeless people, she told her mother that it made her sad and asked why people had to live this way.

      Colleen Taylor didn’t know how to answer, but she gave her daughter some advice—if you do something to help solve the problem, it might make you feel better. Hannah’s response: If more people knew about homelessness, and if they shared what they could, it might help.

      STARTING SMALL

      Hannah got to work. First she composed and delivered a speech on the issue to her first-grade class. Then she started asking her teachers, friends, classmates, and family members for their spare change, which she put in homemade ladybug jars—baby food bottles painted red and black. (Hannah says ladybugs are good luck.)

      This spare change–collection drive soon turned into a formal organization called the Ladybug Foundation. With the help of her parents,

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