Read Cheaper by the Dozen for Free Online Page B

that. That's the schedule."
    Jack had two baths that night.
    One day Dad came home with two victrolas and two stacks of records. He whistled assembly as he hit the front steps, and we helped him unload.
    "Kids," he said, "I have a wonderful surprise. Two victrolas and all these lovely records."
    "But we have a victrola, Daddy."
    "I know that, but the victrola we have is the downstairs victrola. Now we are going to have two upstairs victrolas. Won't that be fun?"
    "Why?"
    "Well from now on," said Dad, "we are going to try to do away with unavoidable delay. The victrolas will go in the bathrooms—one in the boys' bathroom and the other in the girls' bathroom. I'll bet we'll be the only family in town with a victrola in every bath. And when you are taking a bath, or brushing your teeth, or otherwise occupied, you will play the victrolas."
    "Why?"
    "Why, why, why," mimicked Dad. "Why this and why that. Does there have to be a why for everything?"
    '"There doesn't have to be, Daddy," Ernestine explained patiently. "But with you there usually is. When you start talking about unavoidable delay and victrolas, dance music is not the first thing that pops into our minds."
    "No," Dad admitted. "It's not dance music. But you're going to find this is just as good in a way, and more educational."
    "What kind of records are they?" Anne asked.
    "Well," Dad said, "they are very entertaining. They are French and German language lesson records. You don't have to listen to them consciously. Just play them. And they'll finally make an impression."
    "Oh, no!"
    Dad soon tired of diplomacy and psychology.
    "Shut up and listen to me," he roared. "I have spent one hundred and sixty dollars for this equipment. Did I get it for myself? I most emphatically by jingo well did not. I happen already to be able to speak German and French with such fluency that I frequently am mistaken for a native of both of those countries."
    This was at best a terribly gross exaggeration, for while Dad had studied languages for most of his adult life, he never had become very familiar with French, although he could stumble along fairly well in German. Usually he insisted that Mother accompany him as an interpreter on his business trips to Europe. Languages came naturally to Mother.
    "No," Dad continued, "I did not buy this expensive equipment for myself, although I must say I would like nothing better than to have my own private victrola and my own private language records. I bought it for you, as a present. And you are going to use it If those two victrolas aren't going every morning from the minute you get up until you come down to breakfast, I'm going to know the reason why."
    "One reason," said Bill, "might be that it is impossible to change records while you are in the bathtub."
    "A person who applies motion study can be in and out of the tub in the time it takes one record to play."
    That was perfectly true. Dad would sit in the tub and put the soap in his right hand. Then he'd place his right hand on his left shoulder and run it down the top of his left arm, back up the bottom of his left arm to his armpit, down his side, down the outside of his left leg, and then up the inside of his left leg. Then he'd change the soap to his left hand and do the same thing to his right side. After a couple of circular strokes on his midsection and his back, and some special attention to his feet and face, he'd dude under for a rinse and get out. He had all the boys in the bathroom several times to demonstrate just how he did it, and he sat in the middle of the living room rug one day, with all his clothes on, to teach the girls.
    So there was no more unavoidable delay in the bathroom, and it wasn't long before we were all speaking at least a pidgin variety of French and German. For ten years, the victrolas ground out their lessons on the second floor of our Montclair house. As we became fairly fluent, we often would speak the languages at the dinner table. Dad was left out of the