One of our favorite responses from Father Knows Nothing is when someone sends us a note saying which "character" they like best. It makes us chuckle, of course, because those characters are all real people. One of them is my brother, Peter Kaempfer, who celebrates a birthday today.
In honor of Peter, we're offering this free excerpt from Father Knows Nothing featuring the character of Peter.
When my little brother Peter was about five years old, he and I shared a bedroom (with bunk beds). One day there was a fly in our room. It buzzed by my head, and I couldn’t get it. It buzzed by Peter’s head and he couldn’t get it. Peter became obsessed with killing that fly. He chased it around the room, until it was near the top bunk. He climbed up on the top bunk, measured the trajectory of the fly, and without regard to his personal well being dove into the air attempting to catch it. He landed hard on the desk five feet away, a crash so loud that it sent the rest of the family charging into the room to see what had happened. He looked like a mangled mess on the floor–one leg pointing one direction, the other pointing another direction. His eyes were closed and he was grimacing in pain. When my mother asked him if he was OK, he didn’t say anything at first, and we worried that he sustained some sort of head injury. He slowly opened his fist, revealed the dead fly in his palm, and with a grin on his face said: “I got him.”
