I Didn't Ask to Be Born (but I'm Glad I Was) [NOOK Book]

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Overview

In this hilarious collection of observations, Cosby brings us more of his wonderful and wacky insights into the human condition that are sure to become classics. In the tradition of Fat Albert, I DIDN'T ASK TO BE BORN offers a host of new characters, including Peanut Armhouse and Old Mother Harold. Not since Mushmouth, Dumb Donald, Bucky and the Cosby Kids has there been such a memorable cast.

Over the past century few entertainers have ...
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I Didn't Ask to Be Born (but I'm Glad I Was)

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More About This Book

Overview

In this hilarious collection of observations, Cosby brings us more of his wonderful and wacky insights into the human condition that are sure to become classics. In the tradition of Fat Albert, I DIDN'T ASK TO BE BORN offers a host of new characters, including Peanut Armhouse and Old Mother Harold. Not since Mushmouth, Dumb Donald, Bucky and the Cosby Kids has there been such a memorable cast.

Over the past century few entertainers have achieved the legendary status of William H. Cosby Jr. His success spans five decades and virtually all media-remarkable accomplishments for a kid who emerged from humble beginnings in a Philly housing project.

In the tradition of his bestselling books, Fatherhood and Cosbyology, the doctor of comedy holds forth on everything from first love to the Bible. Bill Cosby may not have asked to be born, but we're sure glad he was.
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Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

This is Bill Cosby's first humor book in a decade, but that doesn't mean that this beloved septuagenarian has slipped into obscurity. This talented stand-up comedian, stand-up guy has a 1.5 million Twitter followers and hundreds of thousands of fans on Facebook and Myspace. I Didn't Ask to Be Born manifests Cosby's trademark observational humor, complete with character creations who rival Fat Albert, Mushmouth, and Weird Harold. The funnyman's gentle, grandfatherly persona helps make this long-requested follow-up to Cosbyology a pleasant package of giggles and sighs of agreement. (P.S. George Booth's light-hearted cartoons form the perfect accompaniment to Cosby's friendly wit.)

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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781455505944
  • Publisher: Center Street
  • Publication date: 11/1/2011
  • Sold by: Hachette Digital, Inc.
  • Format: eBook
  • Sales rank: 60,307
  • File size: 4 MB

Meet the Author

Bill Cosby
Bill Cosby is an American entertainer, comedian, actor, producer, author, educator, musician, and activist. He is best known for his portrayal of Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show, which has become a television classic. Born and raised in Philadelphia, he earned a Doctor of Education degree from the University of Massachusetts, and is a jazz musician.
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Read an Excerpt

I Didn't Ask to Be Born

(But I'm Glad I Was)
By Bill Cosby

Center Street

Copyright © 2011 Bill Cosby
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780892969203

ME AND MARCIA: YOU BET YOUR LIFE

Ladies and gentlemen, what you are about to read is a perfect example of the perfect guest on a talk show. At the time of this interview, I believed strongly that I had found the format for the rest of my career. The ratings would prove me wrong, I’m sorry to say.

However, after thousands of hours of interviews of human beings who have something unusual in their lives—don’t we all—this young lady, with her southern accent and completely natural delivery, represents the most perfect guest and the most enjoyable. Not narcissistic. Not arrogant. Just the most fantastic guest.

And so I am proud to present to you my most perfect moment as a television talk show host. (I leave out the game show part because I think that’s what caused the cancellation.)

Bill Cosby: Marcia Brody. Marcia Brody: Hello. Bill Cosby: How are you? Marcia Brody: I’m fine. Bill Cosby: Cheltenham, Pennsylvania. Marcia Brody: That’s right. Bill Cosby: Born? Marcia Brody: No, I’m originally from North, South Carolina. Bill Cosby: That’s what I thought. Yeah, I don’t know too many people from Cheltenham that talk like that. Marcia Brody: Well, I lived over twenty-five years down south. Bill Cosby: What was the name of the place? Marcia Brody: North. Bill Cosby: Nowith? Marcia Brody: No. N-o-r-t-h. North. It’s in South Carolina. In South Carolina, it’s a little town called Due West. And North— Bill Cosby: Wait, wait, slow down. In what—North Carolina? Marcia Brody: No, South Carolina. In South Carolina, there’s a little town called Due West. And North is ninety miles southeast of Due West. That’s right. North is south of the capital, Columbia. You understand? Bill Cosby: I was doing fine until you came out here. Then you started talking and I got lost. And I’m not in a car and I didn’t care to go anywhere. Now you have me someplace I have no idea where I am. I’m in the town North south of Due West. Marcia Brody: No, no. Bill Cosby: Well, where am I? Marcia Brody: It’s North, comma, South Carolina. Bill Cosby: In North South Carolina. Marcia Brody: North, comma, South Carolina. Bill Cosby: Comma is the name? Marcia Brody: No, no! You put a comma in between North and South Carolina. Bill Cosby: I’m in the state of South Carolina… Marcia Brody: Right, right. Bill Cosby: But I’m in a city called North? Marcia Brody: It’s not a city; it’s a town. Bill Cosby: A town. Okay, let me ask you this. Where is the railroad? Marcia Brody: Oh, the railroad is right in the middle of the town. Bill Cosby: That’s right. Now, stop there. Now, where are the black people? Marcia Brody: I don’t know. I mean they’re all around, I guess. I don’t know. Bill Cosby: They’re not all around. They’re either on this side of the track or that side of the track. Are we Due North or southwest? Marcia Brody: You’re in North. Bill Cosby: I’m in North. Marcia Brody: Right, South Carolina. Bill Cosby: Here we go again. Marcia Brody: Anyway… Bill Cosby: No, there’s no anyway. I’m sitting in my car and I’m lost. I want to find my people. And you’re trying to give me directions. Now, okay, let’s put it this way. Where is the river? Marcia Brody: Which river? Bill Cosby: Is there an East River? Marcia Brody: I don’t know. Bill Cosby: Is there a West River? Marcia Brody: I don’t even know where the river is. Bill Cosby: Now I know how you wound up in Cheltenham. Marcia Brody: Anyway, I come from a family of seven children and five of us are living and we’re all grandparents. So we all like to know what’s happening with everybody else. So I put out a family paper three times a year. Bill Cosby: Do you have a sports column? Marcia Brody: No, but you’ll be the headlines on my next paper. Oh, my goodness! Yeah! Bill Cosby: Why don’t you just send them the video? Marcia Brody: What video? What kind of video? Bill Cosby: The video of this show. You make a video of it. Marcia Brody: I don’t have a video of it. Bill Cosby: No. You’re correct. We don’t have one yet. Marcia Brody: Yeah. What? Are you making one? Bill Cosby: Yeah. I’m going to make a video for you. And then you can— Marcia Brody: Oh. Well, I have three sisters in South Carolina and I have a brother in Mississippi. Bill Cosby: You got a pen? Marcia Brody: Three sisters in South Carolina. A brother in Mississippi. Bill Cosby: What part of South Carolina? Marcia Brody: One’s in Charleston. One’s in Beaufort. One’s in Bishopville. Then I have a brother in Mississippi. Bill Cosby: What part? Marcia Brody: Oxford. You want to send it… you want to send it to all my nieces and nephews? Bill Cosby: No, no, it’s too many of them. I’m not sending to the grandchildren either. See, I’ll just make it up for the ones in Charleston, Beaufort, and Bishop. Marcia Brody: Bishopville. Bill Cosby: Okay. Marcia Brody: And don’t forget my brother in Mississippi. Bill Cosby: No, Oxford, I got that. Marcia Brody: Okay, then how about my son in New Jersey? He lives near Trenton. Bill Cosby: How did you get somebody in New Jersey? Marcia Brody: Oh, he’s the one that made me the grandmother. Bill Cosby: Ah! How do you like that? Marcia Brody: Oh, it’s nice. Really is nice. Bill Cosby: They drop the baby off? Marcia Brody: Where?

And so there you have it. The perfect onetime conversation. And I say “onetime conversation” because I don’t know what other subjects she could discuss if we brought her back. And, in fact, nobody said—maybe because the show didn’t last that long—we’ve got to have her back on the show. Then she would come back and it would be a nightmare because she would not be as wonderful as before. What she did the first time created an unbeatable mark, whether you’re high-jumping or doing the limbo.

But I do believe it is great that we did this one thing together.

BERNADETTE

Those of you who are from, like, zero up to about forty-five years old, I’m going to tell you a story that happened in the fifties. It’s about a girl named Bernadette Johnson. But I want you to know I’m not bragging.

When old people start to talk about “their time,” there is a tendency for young people to doze. And young people always say:

That was before my time.

But I just want young people to know we’re not bragging about what we had to do in those days. You’re not bragging when you talk about having to walk five miles in eight-foot snowdrifts. There’s nobody on the face of the earth born who woke up knowing that he or she had to walk five miles in eight feet of snow, with no shoes, who said:

Oh goody! I’ll have something to tell young people.

No, you don’t do that. You say the same thing anybody else would say:

Why me?

And your parents say:

Because I had you.

Now, when I was a kid, there was no law protecting us from old people. Let me put it to you this way. There was no saying:

Well, he’s having a bad day.

There was no psychologist, no psychiatrist, that anybody paid attention to, because crazy people didn’t want to be crazy. See, crazy people get mad if you say they’re crazy. They didn’t want you to know they were crazy, so they were always trying to hide the fact that they were crazy. But everybody knew they were crazy.

Now, when I reminisce about the forties, I repeat, I am not bragging. I’m just relating my experience growing up and looking back on it today. It would be the same if Charles Lindbergh sat here to talk about his flight across the Atlantic in a single-engine plane. He’s not bragging; he’s telling the truth. He would’ve loved to have had a twin-engine jet, with instruments, and radar, and all of that, so he could’ve gone to sleep.

When I was thirteen, there was a girl, many girls, actually, and they always seemed to be armed with some kind of question I wasn’t ready for. One girl, she was just gorgeous. So I went up to her. Now, in those days you would go up to a girl and ask:

Would you like to go out with me?

You didn’t need to do much more than that. Just walk up and say:

Would you like to go out with me?

We were thirteen so she would just say yes or no. Even if she said yes, you weren’t going to do much, because girls were taught to make the male behave. If you tried anything, they’d say:

Stop!

It was like Olympic boxing.

Stop!

Yes, okay.

And our job was to try to sneak up on her, so that she didn’t really think we were touching or anything. But she would still say:

Stop!

And you would stop.

So I went up to this one girl and said, “Would you like to go out with me?”

And she said, “Why do you want to go out with me?”

I said the only thing I was armed with:

“Because I love you.”

And I did. I did love her. I really did. That’s why I told her I loved her.

She asked me, “What is love?”

Now, this is a thirteen-year-old girl, asking me “What is love?” I’m not prepared. I just thought I would use the highest form of a feeling for her and she would “go out with me.” What’s wrong with her? Asking me “What is love?”

“It means that I love you,” I finally said.

“But what is love?”

“I just love you.”

And I was getting mad at her. I don’t love her anymore. Never mind. You ask all these questions, man.

When I turned fourteen, there was another girl. She was beautiful. One of the really great-looking ones, and like all the great-looking girls, she had an ugly friend. So you had to talk to the ugly friend first and get permission to talk to the great-looking one. Eventually I got past the ugly friend and was able to talk to the great-looking one, and the first thing I said to her was “I would like to go out with you.”

She said—very nicely, I remember—she said, “I would like for this to be platonic.”



Continues...
Excerpted from I Didn't Ask to Be Born by Bill Cosby Copyright © 2011 by Bill Cosby. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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Customer Reviews

Average Rating 3.5
( 21 )
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See All Sort by: Showing 1 – 20 of 21 Customer Reviews

  • Posted September 5, 2011

    Live To Read

    This novel is hysterical, to sum it up in one word. It will be hard to write a review without giving anything integral to the hilarity of the novel away. The reader gets to see a younger Bill Cosby, who is funny even at a young age. He instills his natural personality into this fairly short nonfiction book.



    Bill Cosby literally anticipates what the other person would say to him, say, in a talk show and manages to provide funny one liners. The first chapter of the book opens with a conversation between him and who he calls the "perfect talk show guest." They go back and forth about a simple, silly topic-a town called North in South Carolina...leading to much confusion. He then moves on to even funnier memories, closing with a story about his grandchildren and the ever elusive Santa Claus. There are little illustrations scattered throughout the book, right where they will be the funniest. This book is recommended to teens/young adults/adults alike.

    8 out of 9 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted December 7, 2011

    Very entertaining, and brought back memmories of my own childhood.

    Once again Mr. Cosby shared his humor of the many antics that only children can do through their imagination. Indeed, many memories came to the surface with our mothers calling us, making horses out of brooms, and other ways that were playful without technology or violence. Just imagain, no iPad, iPod, and no computer or T.V. Just a radio that would create your own vision of the characters telling the stories. How time has flown by, and I wonder if we are better off with all the "things" we have, than a child's imagination. I doubt it! If you question my thinking, ask a "kid" to make a baseball?

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted March 20, 2013

    Comedy at its finest.

    I have been a fan of Cosby's since the day's of buck-buck. It is so refreshing to be able to pick up a book listed as comedy and not have to put up with the vulgarity that many comedians today use to get a laugh.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted January 28, 2013

    ~To Below

    I am fairly certain that is a Nook error. I have been having stuff like that pop up everywhere. Bill is more than just educated; it takes a true genius to come up and KEEP coming up with great, intelligent humour.
    And don't you DARE insult America's greatest comedian again.

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  • Posted December 12, 2012

    This was a light, humorous read that was easily finished on a cr

    This was a light, humorous read that was easily finished on a cross-country flight. HOWEVER, grammatical errors in professionally published material drive me crazy! THE WORD "IT'S" IS A CONTRACTION FOR "IT IS!" THE POSSESSIVE FORM OF THE WORD "IT" IS "ITS" - NO APOSTROPHE! Bill, you are an educated man. You should know this.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted June 19, 2012

    boring!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    I have read most of Cosby's books but this one was a waste of time and money

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted January 29, 2012

    more from this reviewer

    Who Me? Miss this? Why? Optimistic Extraordinary!

    Bill Cosby’s “I Didn’t Ask to Be Born (But I’m Glad I Was)” is life as everyone experiences it but few take time to note it. How we perceive our circumstances has value as a learning tool if we are able to find humor in some of the things that are ‘hard pills to take’ when originally experienced.

    This book is something that makes you laugh out loud because only you can know what you are laughing about. Cosby gives us circumstances that make us remember our own characters, situations, and events while imputing humor in what may have been a serious, sobering thing when first experienced. This is an idea compendium to read while on a flight, on a bus, waiting in line or anywhere where the passage of time is moot but necessary as it is guaranteed to deliver you to your destination in good spirits and uplifted.

    Reviewed by: Gail

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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    Posted November 11, 2011

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