Oh, that was a very interesting question.
I like those kind of questions and how Cecil always answered them by telling little anecdotes.
Perfect!!
I came upon the first book at a bookstore, and was hooked. My late Grandma, who was in her eighties, also loved it.
I started reading the free alternative weekly City Paper when I moved to D.C. in 1983. The Straight Dope was on the last inside page (right after News of the Weird). I ran across a book in a local bookstore, and then bought more. I still have three or four.
My favorite item in any Cecil book is an index entry which reads:
Shit, why brown
Saw a copy in a bookstore. Locating the SDMB saved my sanity.
We’ll need more info on that Bosda
I was given the first SD book by my middle school teacher ca. 1994. I read the first couple of pages… and then some more… and then I was hooked. It took me a long time to find the second one because it was listed as “More Straight Dope” in the first book, which of course is incorrect. It wasn’t until Return of the Straight Dope that I finally had the right title for the second. Naturally I’ve completed my collection since then.
As a teenager my escape from angst was reading and writing. The SD inspired me on both accounts, especially the second. I loved the way Cecil could convey a complex idea in a short essay and I not only admired his wit but I wanted to emulate it as well. I don’t know how well I have done so, but today I am a reading and literacy teaching at a boarding school. Its a hard job with few successes, but there are a few moments that shine: recall my recent thread about my favorite student getting kicked out of the program. She emailed out of the blue a few weeks ago and told me that I inspired her, and that because of me she likes to read now. That made me cry.
And frankly, I have the SD books to thank for that. No… more than thank. I owe my career, my love of the written word, and my desire to teach to the SD books. Doper Equipoise was kind enough to send me a couple of copies of the Reader a few weeks back and one of them had the “do you stay drier if you run or walk in the rain?” column in it. When classroom teaching resumes I plan on framing that column and hanging it in my classroom. Nobody will know why that old yellowed bit of newsprint is so important, but I will and that’s what matters. Because all these years later, Cecil’s influence is deeper and more profound than a simple entertainment column – long defunct – in a weekly alternative paper has any right to be.
It’s also why I will never leave the SDMB. Its my last link to one of the most influential elements of my formative years and, for the most part, I truly love you guys.
(But I have no idea how to bold or italicized text in this new setup.)
I also just finished my MA. I sent a copy of my thesis to that teacher, who’s home address I still had. I didn’t get too sappy, but I made it clear that her influence was a big part of my success.
I liked to ask questions and read weird books. On a car trip way back when, my mother came out of a rest stop with a present- the first Straight Dope book. I read and re read it. Then, one day back in the year 2000 I was bored and looking for interesting sites. I immediately signed up for the SDMB.
Lancia, that is well said. I really appreciate you posting it.
You just never know what will click with a young person and how it might shape their whole life.
I’m not a writer or a teacher but I do have young children around me. With my own children and now grandchildren I’m always trying to be aware of what I’m saying and ‘doing’. Some kids watch closely but may not hear words.
Again, thank you for posting that.
ETA, the bold and other text changes are right on top of the text/type-in box. Same as they were on the old Dope.
One of the books was being passed around between friends in high school. Probably around 1983 or so. When I went away to college I saw the column was in DC’s City Paper. Post internet i again rediscovered the column on AOL.
It’s kind of the same. At the top of the box where you compose your text is a series of controls. There are controls for bold and italic.
A couple of SF fans moved to Schenectady and there was an article on them, where one mentioned knowing the lyrics to “Louie, Louie.” We met a little while later and I told her I was impressed to hear it. She told me it was in the first Straight Dope book, which I quickly bought and enjoyed a lot. I became a fan, and when I saw the website, I jumped right in.
In Paris, of course.
At the end of the '80s, Mrs T and I took a trip to France to stay with a friend, who was living in Paris and had just got back from a trip the the US. I have no memory of how or why we found them, but he had bought the first two books when he was out in the US; and we were such great house guests that we read them cover-to-cover during our stay in Paris.
So far as I’m aware they were never published in the UK. Whenever I was nosing round a second-hand book store, the books were always on my back-of-the-mind keep-an-eye-out-for-just-in-case list. Never saw them. At some point it occurred to me to wonder if there was anything on the internet, and I struck paydirt. I was an occasional lurker for a while, but while I was self employed the SDMB was a dangerously addictive timewaster when I had no time to waste. Now I have and here I am. Still never owned the books, though.
j
I’ve got a different story to tell! I’d found an SD book on my parents’ bookshelf and my mom caught me reading it. She considered it ‘too adult’ for my young self in about 1985 so she took it away. Years later, I wrote an email to Cecil and it was replied to months later by CK Dexter Haven, basically thanking me for my message and that Cecil wasn’t going to answer it. I think my question was about how helium is sourced since shouldn’t most of it be at the top of the atmosphere.
You’re only allowed one account! SOCK!
::whistles innocently.::
::flees::
Y’all so funny!
His best from the book was the answer about GFCI circuits and how they worked. He explained it and urged the questioner to strip some wires bare and plug them in. Then,
"…find a small, odious child and place him in a bathtub full of water. Say you are going to play a fun new game called “shaking hands with Jesus.”
…
“Then hand the wires to the odious child, surreptitiously substituting the “hot” wire for the “neutral” one. Big laffs!”
I wonder if any newspaper today would run a column with those instructions? It seems unlikely.
Edit: Link
Mid 80s. I stumbled across the first book in a mall bookstore and was hooked. I was somewhat bummed that the actual article was only available in an alternate newspaper in Chicago–a world away–so I was limited to reading Cecil’s articles in book form.
With Miss Scarlet, in The Conservatory with a lead pipe.
!!!
12345…ph
ETA: a short laugh smilie is proving diffucult. Aaaaaccckkkk