From a very early age, Nina always loved to listen to tapes of radio comedians – Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, and Fanny Brice as Baby Snooks. She took joy in trying to outsmart the writers by guessing what the punch line of a joke or routine was going to be. She knew that it was all scripted, but wished that she was as funny as the characters seemed to be.
One day she hoped to get it right and cap somebody’s anecdote – her own, a friend’s or (especially) her parents’ – with the perfect one-liner to end the story in triumph. One day, she hit her stride. As the second child, she got tired of her parents’ bromide that they had had a second baby because they wanted to share the love that they had felt with the first, her brother. Finally, exasperated, she announced, “You had another baby because SOMEBODY forgot to put SOMETHING on!”