Robert Klein

My wife and I have often joked about creating a guide book for visitors to our house that would provide brief explanations of Lavery Family inside jokes. (We are perhaps a bit more idiolectic than most, speaking our own private language drawn from film, television, and personal experience.)

One entry in our lexicon, for example, might be:

take my fishcakes. The proper response to a peculiar/crazy person met in a public place as a way of exiting the locale. Derivation: Robert Klein's 1973 album Child of the 50's, in which, in a bit about the strange people who once frequented automats, the comedian uses the words as an exit strategy for edging away from a "nutter" (as the British call them).

Looking over the tracks on Child a quarter century since I last listened to the album (I still have the 33 disc but no record player), I am amazed that I can recall, almost from memory, virtually every bit.

It is impossible to overestimate the influence of Robert Klein on my way of thinking, my sense of humor, even my teaching style.

Here are the tracks on the album (thanks to Amazon):

1. Civil Defense (No Talking)
2. Public School
3. School Lunch
4. The Sex Impulse
5. "Fabulous 50's"
6. Substitute School Teacher
7. Starting Your Car
8. F.M. Disc Jockey
9. New York City Animals
10. All Night Groceries
11. The Panhandler
12. Public Service Commercials
13. My Little Margie
14. Commercials
15. Our Gang
16. Musical Instruments
17. Athletics
18. Words
19. Childhood Myth
20. "Middle Class Educated Blues"
21. School Assembly
22. James Abram Garfield

And here is what he looks like today.