還記得熊媽媽教的一篇爆笑文章 ”Cheaper by the Dozen” 嗎？

剛剛收到老大寄來的幻燈片，其中一組是 Dugger Family, 根本就和那個傳記節選一模一樣！ 後來那本書還改編成電影《十二生笑》。

因為是幻燈片，無法轉載刊登在此，打了 ”17 kids,” 隨意 google 了一下，還真有！
http://www.duggarfamily.com/photos.html

假如你沒收到老大的分享，那就點一點網頁，來看看別人有多麼神奇！

這家人真厲害！我們帶兩個小孩已經帶得七葷八素，人家生十七個，還這般企業經營！而且每一個都活潑可愛。

我說呀...這家人的收入從哪兒來的呢？我知道他們還出書教導育兒、分享主的榮耀，甚至分享食譜，可是這樣就夠了嗎？

http://www.duggarfamily.com/recipes.html

妳注意到了沒？她們還真誇張！我們才生兩個孩子就已經常叫錯了，她們十七個孩子的名字都是 J 開頭！這是要訓練爸媽的記憶力嗎？

Cheaper by the Dozen
by Frank B. Gilbreth, Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

Chapter One

Whistles and Shaving Bristles

Dad was a tall man, with a large head, jowls, and a Herbert Hoover
collar. He was no longer slim; he had passed the two-hundred-pound
mark during his early thirties, and left it so far behind that there
were times when he had to resort to railway baggage scales to
ascertain his displacement. But he carried himself with the self-
assurance of a successful gentleman who was proud of his wife, proud
of his family, and proud of his business accomplishments.

Dad had enough gall to be divided into three parts, and the ability
and poise to backstop the front he placed before the world. He’d
walk into a factory like the Zeiss works in Germany or the Pierce
Arrow plant in this country and announce that he could speed up
production by one-fourth. He’d do it, too.

One reason he had so many children -- there were twelve of us -- was
that he was convinced anything he and Mother teamed up on was sure
to be a success.

Dad always practiced what he preached, and it was just about
impossible to tell where his scientific management company ended and
his family life began. His office was always full of children, and
he often took two or three of us, and sometimes all twelve, on
business trips. Frequently, we’d tag along at his side, pencils and
notebooks in our hands, when Dad toured a factory which had hired
him as an efficiency expert.

On the other hand, our house at Montclair, New Jersey, was a sort of
school for scientific management and the elimination of wasted
motions -- or ”motionstudy,” as Dad and Mother named it.

Dad took moving pictures of us children washing dishes, so that he
could figure out how we could reduce our motions and thus hurry
through the task. Irregular jobs, such as painting the back porch or
removing a stump from the front lawn, were awarded on a low-bid
basis. Each child who wanted extra pocket money submitted a sealed
bid saying what he would do the job for. The lowest bidder got the
contract.

Dad installed process and work charts in the bathrooms. Every child
old enough to write -- and Dad expected his offspring to start
writing at a tender age -- was required to initial the charts in the
morning after he had brushed his teeth, taken a bath, combed his
hair, and made his bed. At night, each child had to weigh himself,
plot the figure on a graph, and initial the process charts again
after he had done his homework, washed his hands and face, and
brushed his teeth. Mother wanted to have a place on the charts for
saying prayers, but Dad said as far as he was concerned prayers were
voluntary.

It was regimentation, all right. But bear in mind the trouble most
parents have in getting just one child off to school, and multiply
it by twelve. Some regimentation was necessary to prevent bedlam. Of
course there were times when a child would initial the charts
without actually having fulfilled the requirements. However, Dad had
a gimlet eye and a terrible swift sword. The combined effect was
that truth usually went marching on.

Yes, at home or on the job, Dad was always the efficiency expert. He
buttoned his vest from the bottom up, instead of from the top down,
because the bottom-to-top process took him only three seconds, while
the top-to-bottom took seven. He even used two shaving brushes to
lather his face, because he found that by so doing he could cut
seventeen seconds off his shaving time. For a while he tried shaving
with two razors, but he finally gave that up.

”I can save forty-four seconds,” he grumbled, ”but I wasted two
minutes this morning putting this bandage on my throat.”

It wasn’t the slashed throat that really bothered him. It was the
two minutes.

Some people used to say that Dad had so many children he couldn’t
keep track of them. Dad himself used to tell a story about one time
when Mother went off to fill a lecture engagement and left him in
charge at home. When Mother returned, she asked him if everything
had run smoothly.

”Didn’t have any trouble except with that one over there,” he
replied. ”But a spanking brought him into line.”

Mother could handle any crisis without losing her composure.

”That’s not one of ours, dear,” she said. ”He belongs next door.”

None of us remembers it, and maybe it never happened. Dad wasn’t
above stretching the truth, because there was nothing he liked
better than a joke, particularly if it were on him and even more
particularly if it were on Mother. This much is certain, though.
There were two red-haired children who lived next door, and the
Gilbreths all are blondes or redheads.

Although he was a strict taskmaster within his home, Dad tolerated
no criticism of the family from outsiders. Once a neighbor
complained that a Gilbreth had called the neighbor’s boy a son of an
unprintable word.

”What are the facts of the matter?” Dad asked blandly. And then
walked away while the neighbor registered a double take.

But Dad hated unprintable words, and the fact that he had stood up
for his son didn’t prevent him from holding a full-dress court of
inquiry once he got home, and administering the called-for
punishment.

Dad was happiest in a crowd, especially a crowd of kids. Wherever he
was, you’d see a string of them trailing him -- and the ones with
plenty of freckles were pretty sure to be Gilbreths.

He had a way with children and knew how to keep them on their toes.
He had a respect for them, too, and didn’t mind showing it.

He believed that most adults stopped thinking the day they left
school...