Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader Read Free

menu?
    Caller: No.
    Tech: Okay. Right click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?
    Caller: No.
    Tech: Sir, can you tell me what you have done up until this point?
    Caller: Sure. You told me to write “click” and I wrote “click.”
     
    Tech: Okay ma’am, do you see the button on the right-hand side of your mouse?
    Caller: No, there’s a printer and a phone on the right-hand side of my mouse.
     
    Caller: Now what do I do?
    Tech: What is the prompt on the screen?
    Caller: It’s asking for “Enter Your Last Name.”
    Tech: Okay, so type in your last name.
    Caller: How do you spell that?
     
    Tech: Tell me, is the cursor still there?
    Caller: No, I’m alone right now.

FOOD ORIGINS
    History that’s good enough to eat (or drink) .

LATTE
    If you ordered a caffe latte in Italy, you’d get a cup of coffee with some milk in it. (In Italian, it literally means “coffee with milk.”) You wouldn’t get espresso combined with steamed milk. That’s an American latte, a variation on cappuccino that was created in 1959 in Berkeley, California. Lino Meiorin, owner of Caffe Mediterraneum, came up with it when customers who were unfamiliar with Italian coffee drinks ordered a cappuccino and, disliking the strong taste, asked for extra milk. Meiorin served his first lattes in bowls and pint glasses.

FAST FOOD KIDS’ MEAL
    The first fast-food chain to offer a combo meal of kid-size portions (with a free toy) was Salt Lake City-based Arctic Circle, a burger joint popular on the West Coast from the 1960s to the ’80s. Introduced in 1961, the Arctic Circle Kids’ Meal consisted of a hamburger, fries, soda, and a toy prize, all inside a brightly colored box with games and puzzles on it. The format became a standard part of every fast-food restaurant’s menu. Examples: Burger King’s Kids Club Meal, McDonald’s Happy Meal, and Sonic’s Wacky Pack.

THE SHIRLEY TEMPLE
    In the 1930s, child actress Shirley Temple was the biggest star in Hollywood and she frequently went to dinner at Chasen’s, a restaurant popular with the film industry. In 1938, on the occasion of her 10th birthday, the bartenders at Chasen’s concocted a drink just for her—alcohol-free and caffeine-free. The original recipe: two parts ginger ale, one part orange juice, a tablespoon of grenadine syrup, and a maraschino cherry garnish. Today, the drink is more commonly made with 7-Up instead of ginger ale, and without orange juice. Temple was such a big star that the drink caught on. Today there are alcoholic variations, such as the Shirley Temple Black, which adds Johnnie Walker Black Whiskey or Kahlua and plays on the star’s married name.

WHY ARE THEY CALLED “TANKS”?
    And other interesting word origins to read on the tank.
     
    TERM: Jerky
    MEANING: Dried or cured meat
    ORIGIN: It comes from the Quechua language, spoken in the Andes region of South America since before the time of the Incas. Their word ch’arki means “dried flesh.” Spanish explorers, possibly as early as the 1500s, borrowed it and it became the Spanish word charqui . That migrated to English, and by the 1840s it had become “jerky.”
     
    TERM: Tank
    MEANING: An armored, heavily armed military vehicle that moves on tracks
    ORIGIN: During World War I, the British military started working on a new specialized combat vehicle. The project was so top-secret that the workers who were making the vehicles didn’t even know what they were—the government told them that they’d be used to carry water during desert operations. The workers called them “water-carriers”…until someone pointed out that the name could be abbreviated to “WC”—meaning “water-closet” or “toilet.” So they started calling them “water tanks,” and then “tanks.” (Tanks made their combat debut at the Battle of the Somme in Northern France in September 1916.)
     
    TERM: Hush puppies
    MEANING: A classic food from the American South
    ORIGIN: Hush puppies are deep-fried balls of cornmeal batter,