BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis. We're playing this week with Faith Salie, Roxanne Roberts and Paula Poundstone. And here is your host, again, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. Thank you everybody.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Right now, it's time to play the WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME Bluff The Listener game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play our game on the air. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME.
KYLE FLIRK: Hi, this is Kyle Flirk from central Pennsylvania.
SAGAL: What do you do there?
FLIRK: Well, I am doing a lot of freelance electronic IT support work.
SAGAL: I see. So are you working from home?
FLIRK: Sometimes.
SAGAL: When you work from home, do you find it hard to, like, get yourself going for work because you don't have to get up and get dressed?
FLIRK: Not really. It's actually easier without the whole getting dressed part.
SAGAL: Wow.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: So you're telling me there's - it might be a good chance that if you're handling someone's IT problem from home, you might be wearing your boxer shorts or nothing at all.
FLIRK: Well, the webcam only covers from the top half, so...
SAGAL: There you go. Well, welcome to the show, Kyle. You're going to play the game in which you must tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Kyle's topic?
KURTIS: Hi, kids. I'm your teacher, Mr. Kurtis.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Finally, September has come and your children are back in classrooms where they are now someone else's problem. This week, we read a story of someone coping with the stresses of back-to-school time in an unusual way. Our panelists are going to tell you about it. Pick the true story, you'll win our prize - Carl Kasell's voice on your voice mail. Are you ready to play?
FLIRK: Yep.
SAGAL: All right, well, let's hear, then, the first story from Faith Salie.
FAITH SALIE: As Principal Julianne Lowry (ph) of Somerset High School in Somerset, Md. prepared for the first day of school, she noticed something strange - the enrollment of an unprecedented 12 exchange students, all from Germany. Things got even stranger when she realized that the young Germans were all staying at the same address. And that address belonged to Somerset's new German teacher, Charlie Sacca (ph). Sacca had applied to be the drama teacher, but like so many schools undergoing budget cuts, Somerset High can only afford to hire teachers who teach more than one subject. When Sacca eagerly offered to be not only the drama coach but also the school's first ever German teacher, Principal Lowry hired him on the spot.
On Labor Day, she bumped into Sacca at the local mall by the Rosetta Stone kiosk where the aspiring teacher was clutching a CD entitled "Speak German In A Week." Six or seven German teenagers were close by trying to order Auntie Anne's Pretzels. Turns out, Sacca didn't know a word of German and was quartering a dozen Deutsche youth in order to master it before teaching it. The principal fired Herr Sacca on the spot. He maintains, I really could've done it if they'd let me try. I was speaking only German to the kids at my apartment. I'm really good with accents. Sacca now plans to create an international children's theater group. He wants to call it the Ach Tong School (ph).
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: A German teacher tries to learn German by getting some German kids to come and teach it at the same time he is teaching it. For your next story of back-to-school drama, let's go to Roxanne Roberts.
ROXANNE ROBERTS: Teamwork, planning, setting goals - all the foundations of a successful life. Two enterprising 5-year-olds in Russia took everything they learned in kindergarten to break out of kindergarten because unlike their more compliant peers, these little boys decided the very last place they would learn anything useful was in school.
The two future criminals, or presidential candidates, spent several days digging a tunnel under the schoolyard fence with sandbox spades and slipped out during an afternoon walk last week. Their destination - a luxury car showroom filled with Jaguars, reported The Siberian Times.
Their plan was foiled when they told a passerby that they wanted, quote, "a grown-up car but didn't have any money." The boys were driven to the local police station and returned to their parents with no charges filed. But the hapless kindergarten aid was fired and the acting head of the school put on administrative notice.
SAGAL: Two 5-year-olds tunnel their way out of kindergarten, re-enacting "The Great Escape." Your last story of the most wonderful time of the year comes from Paula Poundstone.
PAULA POUNDSTONE: Those other two stories were preposterous.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: Exhausted, already, by taxiing their three kids to school, to after-school sports, student government and after-school detentions, Mary Catherine (ph) and Kenny Mika (ph) have made the obvious choice. They've moved into the basement of Acton-Boxborough High School, where their children, Austin, Addison, and Benjamin are, respectively, a junior, a sophomore and a freshman.
We just couldn't drive back and forth to the school one more time, and when the kids are late, the school punishes the parents. I was getting up at 4 a.m. every day. I laid their clothes out and packed their backpacks, but Addison eats her breakfast so slowly. I think I was getting an ulcer just waiting every morning for her to finish her toast crust. I can't chew her toast for her, explains Mary Catherine, nor will she have to, now that the family lives in the girl's locker room.
Addison now breaks her fast each morning in the school cafeteria, where they don't even serve toast. And if she takes too long eating her microwave frozen cinnamon roll, she's already in school. It started out rough. Mary Catherine had to wear the same clothes to her job as an office manager at a law firm for a week because she couldn't get her locker opened.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: I don't care. At least I never have to leave work to bring Austin his cleats or his math homework or his lunch or his permission slip or his paper mache King Tut project. He still calls me at work, but I just say it's in the girl's locker room. Go get it.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: All right, let's review. School just started. One of these things just happened. Was it from Faith Salie, a German teacher who didn't know how to speak German so brought over a bunch of German kids to teach him; from Roxanne, two 5-year-olds re-enact "The Great Escape" by digging their way out of kindergarten; or from Paula, a family that solved the problem of getting to school on time by just moving into the school? Which of these is the real story?
FLIRK: Well, I'm inclined to think it's the story of the two young escape artists.
SAGAL: OK, you're choosing, then, Roxanne's story of the two little diggers. Well, here's someone who knew something about that real story.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MICHAEL ROSEN: There's two kindergarteners digging a hole in the fence along the ground at the kindergarten and then escaping.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: That was Michael Rosen from Fusion who wrote about the great escape. Congratulations, Kyle, you got it right. You earned a point for Roxanne. You have won our prize - Carl Kasell will record the greeting on your home answering machine. Well done.
FLIRK: Thank you very much.
SAGAL: Thanks for playing with us today.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PLACE")
THE ANIMALS: (Singing) We gotta get out of this place if it's the last thing we ever do. We gotta get out of this place. Girl, there's a better life for me and you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.