More About Brain-Teasers, Tests and Puzzles

Algrove "Smitty" Smith


     They say that in the Victorian era, groups stood around the piano and sang songs, and somebody always played well, and everybody knew the music. Or was that just in polite English novels? After that came such shared cultural experiences as sitting around the radio listening to FDR’s fireside chats, then sitting in front of the TV watching “Leave it to Beaver” together.  We of my generation  have had our own little games,displaced by electronic media, and  likely to fade into oblivion even before my grandchildren are grown. And some seem uniquely American.

     We've told “Little Moron” jokes. “Why did the Little Moron through butter out the window? Because he wanted to see a butterfly.” 

     We've walked beside a friend, on his left, and reached across his back to tap his right shoulder, then jerked our hands away before he can see us. We've laughed like crazy when he has edo the right to see who has touched him. The cartoonist Gary Larson did a great take-off on that—the “friend” is an owl who turns his head all the way around to see who did it.

     We've  puzzle it out: One man points to another and says, “Brothers and sisters I have none, but this man’s father is my father’s son.”  How are they related?
  

     We've practiced tongue-twisters:  “How much wood would a wood-chuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” or, “ Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.  If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?”  And we've articulated very carefully so we were'nt naughty when we've recited, “I slit a sheet, a sheet I slit, upon the slitted sheet I sit. I am a sheet-slitter.”

     And we have hand signals. Besides “the bird” and besides making a “T” of our hands to signify “time out,” and “thumbs up” for good and the opposite for down, If we point a finger finger at our ear and run our hand in circles, we Americans recognize that symbol for “Crazy,” especially if we look cross-eyed and stick out our tongues at the same time.

     And every kid of my generation  haslearned the test of coordination: You pat your head with one hand and rub your stomach with the other hand, then to switch hands to continue rubbing the stomach and patting the head. 

     We realized that not everybody knew that activity when we were scuba diving at Grand Turk Island, a British protectorate in the Caribbean.  Our dive master was “Smitty,” a good-natured local  man who is legendary among divers for his diving skill and for his  physical power. (He regularly carries six 30-pound air tanks at a time.) Somehow, the idea of rubbing the stomach and patting the head came up, and all the Americans on the dive boat immediately performed. I saw Smitty, looking bemused, trying out his first effort ever at rubbing his stomach and patting his head. 

     We ended that vacation by teaching what might be a uniquely American stunt. The English husband a wife had never sat in a pick-up truck before, so when we saw a truck parked outside the hotel, we encouraged them to climb into the bed, and we shot a photograph for them.  We told them that next, they needed to ride in the cab and to toss their emptied beer cans into the bed of the pickup while the truck was moving.