Table of contents for October 2017 in Reader's Digest

EDITOR SPOTLIGHT: Andy Simmons NOT EVERYONE CAN be an Einstein—not even Einstein. The great scientist once reportedly climbed into a cab and promptly forgot his address. So the man who developed the theory of relativity told the driver, “Take me to Einstein’s house.” Now, “dumb” comes in many flavors. There’s the scatterbrained-Einstein brand of dumb. There’s 1 + 1 = 47 dumb. There’s always-sayingthe- wrong-thing-at-the-wrong-time dumb. There’s making-lousy-decisions dumb. Our article “Smart People Do the Dumbest Things!” has a little bit of each and more. I have to admit that as I worked on it, I got some not-so-guilty pleasure seeing the best and brightest at their dimmest. For one brief shining moment, I was an equal. My particular brand of dumb is more in line with Einstein dumb, but…

THE INVENTORS we remember didn’t invent anything. They’re the people who took somebody else’s invention and made it commercially viable. DAVE CHAPPELLE, comedian, in a speech at Allen University MARK KURLANSKY, author, in Time IF JOHN LENNON was right that life is what happens when you’re making other plans, parenthood is what happens when everything is flipped over and spilling everywhere and you can’t find a towel or a sponge or your “inside” voice. KELLY CORRIGAN, wri ter, in her book Lift PEOPLE ALWAYS tell me, “There aren’t enough hours in the day to get to everything I want to do!” which is true. But we don’t live our lives in days; we live our lives in weeks. Think 168 hours instead of 24 hours, and everything changes. LAURA VANDERKAM…

Our two-year-old, Tess, was sitting quietly in church one Sunday when she became mesmerized by a balding man seated in front. Her curiosity got the better of her, and she shouted for all to hear, “Why is that man’s head coming out of his hair?” JOAN ANASTASI, Diamond Bar, Cal i fornia While standing on line for confession, I overheard a woman whisper to her friend, “I really don’t know why I’m going to confession. I’ve been so busy, I haven’t had a minute to sin.” STEVE JAKIN, Federal Way, Washington After a worship service, a mother with a fidgety sevenyear- old told me how she finally got her son to sit still and be quiet. About halfway through the sermon, she leaned over and whispered, “If you’re not quiet,…

NERVES BEFORE A PRESENTATION You’re speaking in front of your boss and peers, and you want to run screaming. Repeat this gag to calm down: Q: What did the green grape say to the purple grape? A: “Breathe, stupid!” A COWORKER STINKS Your colleague in the next cubicle suffers from a malady associated with lack of hygiene. Hold your nose and offer a masked critique by telling this joke: Mitchy had a problem with body odor, so he went to see his doctor. “Do you wash?” the doctor asked him. “Every morning,” Mitchy replied. “I begin at my head and wash down as far as possible. Then I begin at my feet and wash up as far as possible.” “Well,” the doctor said, “I suggest you go home and wash…

To celebrate his girlfriend’s birthday, Luke Fortune drove from a small town in Central Oregon to Portland, where he parked his car in a paid garage overnight. The next morning, he discovered that the car’s window had been smashed, along with his dreams for the future: His backpack and computer were gone. “Everything important to me was on that computer,” said Fortune, 21, who is studying to become a paramedic. “My classwork, every paper I’d written, and all the programs I needed for my paramedic tests. Every letter I was working on for job applications. I felt sick.” Two days after the theft, another young man was standing outside his apartment, also in Portland. Masoud Almazrouei, 29, was an exchange student from the United Arab Emirates. He had been approached…

Bangst (BANKST), n. Stress over diminishing funds. Example: “Topher read the ATM printout carefully, filled with bangst. That couldn’t be only two zeroes, could it?” Fidgital (FIJ-ih-tull), adj. Excessively checking one’s devices. Example: “Victoria grew tired of watching her fidgital fiancé glance at his iPhone every five seconds.” Flabsolution (flab-suh-LOO-shun), n. Pardoning yourself for weight gain. Example: “There must be a traveler’s forgiveness for having clotted cream, roasted chicken, and churros in a single week. Zach felt flabsolution.” Palbatross (PAL-buh-tross), n. A friend you’d like to drop. Example: “Chuck was convinced that Brea was a palbatross until their mutual friend Zoe showed him that Brea was actually making very funny jokes; she just said them so low, they were hard to hear. But then he got annoyed at that.” Tyrunt…

1We make a better living than you might think, especially for a job that doesn’t usually require a high school diploma. The average annual salary for a garbage-truck driver is almost $38,000, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, but we can make significantly more. In Chicago and other nearby cities, drivers pull in an average of $51,500 a year. Plus we have great job security: This is one role that can’t be outsourced overseas! 2 That said, the work’s not easy. Those assigned to a traditional rear-loading truck lift an average of 13,000 pounds per day. The Bureau of Labor Statistics rates garbage collecting as the fifth-most-dangerous job in America, behind roofers, airplane pilots, fishermen, and loggers. 3Our biggest danger? Getting hit by passenger cars when we’re stopped. At…

Do I want to be a hero to my son? No. I would like to be a very real human being. That’s hard enough. ROBERT DOWNEY JR. , actor WE CELEBRATE SUCCESS, BUT I THINK WE SHOULD ALSO JUST CELEBRATE GIVING IT A GO. PHIL KEOGHAN, television personality Life is too complicated not to be orderly. MARTHA STEWART, life st yle mogul My doctor says if I don’t drink, don’t smoke, if I eat properly and take care of myself, I really should live until midnight. MALACHY MCCOURT, actor and author When you fall in love, it doesn’t matter how old you are. You always feel like a teenager. AMY DICKINSON, advice columni st I THINK IT’S A GOOD HEALTH TIP TO SAY “I’M NOT A WORRIER.” BILL MURRAY, actor…

Home of the Brave I just read “The Tough Guy” by Ed Gavagan. I haven’t laughed this hard at an article in years! And the drawing [by C. F. Payne] of Ed and his drill sergeant dad was priceless. LIANE DAY, Braselton, Georgia I could not believe all the trauma Mary-Claire King endured that April Fools’ week. Thank goodness she pressed on, because her discovery of the BRCA1 gene (which has been linked to breast cancer) saved my life. I just had two preventive surgeries after discovering I have the gene. Thank you, Mary-Claire, for saving so many! ANNETTE SNODGRASS, Monongahela, Pennsylvania This issue has the most beautiful cover I’ve ever seen, and I have been a subscriber for a long time. Anyone would be proud to have it on…

I STILL HAVE NO CLUE how I became just about the oldest person in our office. I must have missed the memo that was supposed to give me the heads-up. Today got here faster than I ever might have expected, and the time warp has given me whiplash. My term for this rite of passage, this occupational hazard? The flip side. Of course, at 53, I’m hardly old. But I’m older than all but maybe six of the 120 employees in the regional branch of our public relations firm—slightly older than the few fortysomethings, somewhat older than the many thirtysomethings, and much older than our ubiquitous twentysomethings. It seems only yesterday I was still the new kid on the job, with no idea what I was doing. When my colleagues…

LYNN ANNE Poirier and Howard Browning had been living together in Poirier’s home when they made a verbal deal: If either ever won the lottery, they’d split the winnings 50/50. The Sanford, Florida, couple weren’t just every-now-and-then lottery players. They bought tickets as often as possible and, in the days before Powerball, even road-tripped north to try their luck in big-number lotteries in Georgia and South Carolina. On June 2, 2007, they stopped at a convenience store, where each bought tickets for the Florida Lottery’s big Firecracker Millionaire Raffle. Browning says that, as usual, the pair (who were both 53 at the time) placed the tickets on the fireplace mantel of their home. Then, after the drawing on July 4, Poirier didn’t come home. Confused and concerned, Browning eventually thought…

▪ CAR INSURANCE Most people keep the same car-insurance company for 15 years or more. “But the companies change their pricing strategies all the time,” says Kerri Moriarty, head of company development at Cinch Financial in Boston. Also, if your profile changes (if you get married, for instance), you may be eligible for lower premiums. ▪ HOMEOWNERS INSURANCE According to a Consumer Reports survey, more than half of people who recently switched insurers found a better price. The organization recommends working with an independent agent, who can help assess your needs. ▪ CELL PHONE SERVICE “Cell phone companies are always vying for your business,” says Moriarty, so she suggests shopping for promotions, especially if you’re getting a new device. ▪ CABLE SUBSCRIPTION “Often you have at least two choices for…

IN RECENT YEARS, doctors have increasingly focused on the lifesaving benefits of lowering your systolic blood pressure. (That’s the top number. The bottom number, diastolic blood pressure, tends to fall naturally after age 55.) A landmark 2015 study showed that volunteers who lowered their systolic pressure to 120 mm Hg had a 25 percent lower risk of heart attack and a 43 percent lower risk of death from cardiovascular causes compared with those whose systolic pressure was 140. Losing weight, eating less sodium, exercising more, and quitting smoking are among the best nonmedicinal ways to reduce your systolic blood pressure substantially and for the long term. Your doctor might also prescribe medication. But if you need extra help reaching your goal, these lesserknown tricks can shave off a few points…

‘‘BYE. I’M GOING TO WORK!” Gus says after dinner. And work he does, for as long as the doorman who’s on that night will let him. I don’t know when he got it into his head to be a doorman, but once that idea landed there, when he was about 11, it stuck. Gus is one of my 16-year-old twin sons. Gus has autism. At first it must have been rather startling, this kid who would don the doorman’s jacket and sit at the front desk of our New York City apartment building. But now everyone knows him, and Gus takes the job seriously. He knows the names of all the building’s residents, their dogs, their apartment numbers. He knows all the food-delivery people. The moment people come into the…

I n 2008, Yesenia Guitron, a single mother with two kids, joined the St. Helena, California, branch of Wells Fargo as a personal banker. Just two months into the job, she noticed that coworkers were opening accounts for customers without their consent. “I kept getting more and more people coming in: ‘How come I got this debit card? I didn’t request it,’” Guitron told the Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, California. Some people found themselves with 10 or 15 debit cards. “That’s when I realized ... this was intentional, and there was a very clear pattern.” Guitron brought her concerns to her branch manager—who ignored her. She went to human resources— still nothing. Undeterred, she called the bank’s ethics department. Ten months later, after she’d kept after her superiors for…

IT’S A READER’S favorite complaint: “The movie casting was all wrong— that’s not at all what I imagined [insert name of beloved literary character] to look like!” But for New York artist Brian J Davis, imagining is only the beginning. Using verbatim character descriptions from famous novels and a law-enforcement sketch program called FACES, Davis builds composite portraits of literary characters one detail at a time, picking from a library of 2,000 unique facial features. The result: The Composites, an uncanny art project that challenges our ideas of what famous fictional characters might really look like. Here’s a lineup of our favorites. Clarice Starling from the novel Hannibal AUTHOR Thomas Harris A DESCRIPTION FROM THE BOOK “FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling, thirty-two, always looked her age, and she always made…

MUCH OF MY childhood in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, was excruciatingly lonely. Family troubles, devastating shyness, and a complete lack of social skills ensured a life of solitude. Hunting was not only my opening into a world of wonder; it was my salvation. From the age of 12, I lived, breathed, existed to hunt and fish. On school days I would hunt in the morning and evening. On Fridays I would head into the woods by myself, often for the entire weekend. Still, I had not learned to love solitude, as I do now. I would see something beautiful—the sun through the leaves, a deer moving through dappled light—and I would want to point and say to someone, “Look.” But there was no one there. Then I met Ike. It…

WINTER AND SPRING are always soggy in northwest Washington State. But this time the clouds outdid themselves, soaking the town of Oso with twice the usual rainfall. So when the sun at last shone on Saturday, March 22, 2014, LoAnna and Kris Langton’s three older kids ran outside to play with friends. Inside, LoAnna, 30, nursed their youngest, four-monthold Kristian, while her mom and great-aunt sat on the couch. Suddenly LoAnna heard a sound—like the roar of a jet. The lights began to flicker. She rushed outside in time to see a half-mile-wide tsunami of churning mud, sand, and debris thundering down the hill toward them, knocking over hundreds of towering conifers like so many toothpicks. LoAnna gathered everyone into the bedroom farthest from the falling hillside, where they huddled…

THE DAREDEVIL NUN One day while I was cutting my grass on my riding lawn mower, two nuns from a nearby monastery stopped to chat. One of them said, “I’ve always wanted to drive a tractor.” So I offered to let her drive mine. I set it at the lowest speed, and she drove off. “It’s like driving a car,” I remarked to the other nun. “She’s never driven a car,” she replied. Looking up, I saw the first nun heading straight for the fire hydrant. I ran after her, yelling, “Turn it!” The other nun called out, “She can’t hear, either.” LULA MAE GOSTLEY, Evansville, Indiana LOVE AT FIRST WINK Ten years after we married, my wife and I were reminiscing about how we’d met in college. “It was…

Yes, she did. After the trial court and the Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal both ruled for Poirier in 2012, Browning appealed to the Supreme Court of Florida—and won. Poirier was correct: The agreement wasn’t executed within a year of being made, because they hadn’t won yet. But they could have won, and that made all the difference. The supreme court held that because the verbal agreement could have been completed within one year, it didn’t need to be in writing in order to be enforceable. So the court sent the case back for a new trial. This time, in February 2016, Poirier lost; she was ordered to pay Browning $291,000. However, his attorney, Sean Sheppard, called it “a hollow victory” because a month later, Poirier said she had…

YOU’RE BUMPED FROM A FLIGHT By law, your carrier has to make it up to you, and the rules are very specific. Assuming the airline doesn’t get you to your destination within an hour of your original arrival time, you’re entitled to double the one-way fare, up to $675, according to Department of Transportation regulations. If you arrive more than two hours late, it’s four times the fare, up to $1,350. Ask the desk agent nicely and you might be able to secure meal vouchers as well, though the law doesn’t require that they be provided. YOU VOLUNTEER YOUR SEAT Your good deed prevented others from being involuntarily bumped, and your heroism should be rewarded generously. United Airlines offers volunteers up to $10,000 for giving up their seats— no joke—but…

Heart Attacks Spike After Flu Need another reason to get your flu shot? A study in the Internal Medicine Journal reveals that a respiratory infection can trigger a heart attack. Of the 578 heart attack patients in the study, 17 percent reported having had a cold, the flu, or another respiratory infection within the week prior to the attack, and another 21 percent reported an illness from 8 to 35 days prior to it. If you’ve recently had the flu, stay alert for the often subtle signs of a heart attack, including chest pain, shortness of breath, nausea, and light-headedness. Coffee Curbs Liver Cancer Liver cancer is the sixth-mostcommon cancer in the world, with nearly 800,000 cases diagnosed in 2012. After examining data from 26 studies, researchers from the University…

October is National Disability Awareness Month, and on October 18, people with autism and other disabilities can make a special appointment to try out a new job. Disability Mentoring Day, which began as a White House initiative in 1999, matches businesses, organizations, and universities with disabled people eager to work. The centerpiece is the program that allows participants to shadow employees and get real-world, hands-on experience. (For more information, go to aapd.com/ disability-mentoring-day.) Placed at the right job, employees on the autism spectrum can sometimes become super-workers. For example, Ultra Testing hires software testers; on one project, its workers found 56 percent more bugs than IBM did in its own software. HP, Microsoft, and other tech companies have launched programs to recruit and train workers on the autism spectrum, as…

Edison Park Community Church stood for 87 years in northwest Chicago before it was razed in 2016. Churches come and go, but what makes the passing of this house of worship notable is the beautiful way its members chose to go out. Edison Park Community had 300 active members when the most recent pastor, Rev. Katherine Karch, was a kid growing up in the working-class neighborhood in the 1960s. But by the time Karch took over, 12 years ago, membership had dwindled dramatically. By last year, Edison Park Community was home to only 30 congregants. “We couldn’t pay the bills anymore,” Karch says. The church’s members had little choice but to sell their brick building. A developer paid $740,000 for the property and planned to tear down the church to…

TRICK OR TWEET ▪ Ah, yes! It’s that magical time of year when the cobwebs in my house suddenly become decorative. @TWOSAPPHIRESBLU ▪ For Halloween I’m going as that feeling you get at a store when you try to refold a sweater properly & put it back on the shelf. @ROBDELANEY ▪ Idea for haunted house: dimly lit grocery store sprinkled with people you haven’t talked to since high school. @PAPERWASH ▪ A haunted house for teenagers: You just yell at them, “What college are you going to, what are you majoring in, what career will you have!” @TBHJUSTUNICORN AN ELDERLY WOMAN was arrested for shoplifting a can of peaches. When she went before the judge, he asked her, “How many peaches were in the can?” She replied, “Six.” “In…

ON MONDAY, JANUARY 26, 2015, JONATHAN Koch awakened feeling awful. God, I’m sweaty, he thought. Even my knees are aching. And what’s up with my freezing-cold feet? Jonathan was supposed to be on the day’s first flight from Los Angeles to Washington, DC; as the co-runner of a reality TV production company, he was expected at an important conference that afternoon. Instead, he headed not to the airport but to Providence Tarzana Medical Center, where doctors—finding no cause for his discomfort—gave him a shot of morphine and sent him on his way. He made it to DC, checked in to his hotel, and fell into bed by midnight. The next morning, he could barely get up. Why does my body feel like concrete? he wondered. His eyes were beyond bloodshot.…

LIKE ANY COLLEGE student, Connor Cox was excited when he received a package from home. He assumed it was filled with food and other goodies. He tore open the box and, indeed, found a surprise inside: garbage. Turns out, he’d left home without taking out the trash as he’d promised his mother, so she mailed it to him. Source: buzzfeed.com A FLORIDA MAN drove his 24-yearold daughter to a job interview. When she came back to the car with a large amount of cash, he figured she’d gotten the job and this was her advance. Not quite. Unbeknownst to the man, he had become his daughter’s getaway driver in her fifth—and final—bank heist. Source: Sun Sentinel WHEN A FRENCH couple named their child Nutella, a court stepped in and said…

A new study found that people with a lot of phobias are more likely to have health problems. Or as those people put it, “I was afraid of that.” JIMMY FALLON According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. This means to the average person, if you have to go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy. JERRY SEINFELD Honestly, my biggest fear about becoming a zombie is all the walking. @GASHLEYMADISON Suffer from a phobia of numbers? Call the Number Phobia Help Line at 014738209403032095372649403 02746809880829800888674729. @JULIANDUTTON1 I live in fear that one day the real “World’s Greatest Dad” is going to show up to reclaim his rightful mug. @MARCMACK You don’t really know true fear…

1. fourscore ('fohr-skohr) adj.— A: sixteen. B: forty. C: eighty. 2. tabulate ('ta-byuh-layt) v.— A: rank by weight and height. B: count or arrange systematically. C: indent a column. 3. copious ('coh-pee-uhss) adj.— A: plentiful. B: scanty. C: carefully reproduced. 4. gross (grohss) n.—A: twelve dozen. B: 51 percent. C: two bushels. 5. aggregate ('a-grih-get) adj.— A: increasing exponentially. B: amounting to a whole. C: left over as a fraction. 6. googol ('goo-gaul) n.— A: negative number. B: value of pi. C: 1 followed by 100 zeros. 7. paucity ('paw-sih-tee) n.— A: overabundance. B: shortage. C: average. 8. myriad ('meer-ee-uhd) adj.— A: very heavy. B: immeasurably small. C: countless. 9. troika ('troy-kuh) n.— A: numbered wheel. B: group of three. C: ancient calculator. 10. calibrate ('ka-luh-brayt) v.— A: adjust according…

1. fourscore—[C] eighty. That’s the strangest thing I’ve heard in all my fourscore years. 2. tabulate—[B] count or arrange systematically. The committee has tabulated the votes—and determined that it’s a tie! 3. copious—[A] plentiful. Harriet’s notes from history class are copious but completely illegible. 4. gross—[A] twelve dozen. How many gross of cupcakes did you order for the Halloween party? 5. aggregate—[B] amounting to a whole. Analysts are expecting the aggregate demand for electric cars to skyrocket. 6. googol—[C] 1 followed by 100 zeros. Emile’s chances of dating Jacqueline are about one in a googol. 7. paucity— [B] shortage. Given the paucity of evidence against the murder suspect, the detective reluctantly let her go. 8. myriad— [C] countless. Brooke plans to consume myriad pumpkin-spiceflavored products this fall. 9. troika—[B] group…