Sheplives

Last Summary Update: 10-28-2026

Child Cruelty
Airdate: Monday - January 15, 1973

WOR Show
WOR Rerun

(Redated from: 01/1973)

audio

(NOTE ABOUT TIME REFERENCES: Since there are many different copies of shows out there from different sources, all time references are from the beginning of one single recorded copy, since various copies, depending on when the recordee started recording, had news at the beginning or shortened themes. The times would vary from copy to copy.)

First Spoken Line After Theme Ends

Yeah, its like that TV commercial. . .

Show Description

[ Courtesy: GROK Summary - - ]   
  Shepherd begins with a mystery sound and a digression about his new mustache, which has drawn angry letters linking it to hippies and drug culture. He notes that his late father warned against trusting men with mustaches and bow ties, jokes about "beard weevils" and "beard roaches," and polls the engineer on whether the mustache improves his appearance (it makes him look untrustworthy at poker).

He then celebrates a new trend toward realism in aquarium decorating. Instead of romantic medieval castles, mermaids, and colored gravel, modern tanks feature miniature rusty beer cans, rotting tires, fake sewage sediment, old newspapers, and even half-buried figures in concrete overcoats - recreating actual polluted river bottoms (Harlem River, East River, etc.). These can be "X-rated" adult aquariums. The fish themselves are shifting from goldfish to genuine "trash fish" such as carp, bullheads, eels, and toads.

This feeds into a broader cultural rejection of traditional ideals of beauty and order:
- Lawns of carefully nurtured crabgrass (or even poison ivy) instead of bluegrass.
- One man paved his entire yard, painted flower-bed decals on the concrete, and uses it for stickball.
- Preference for exotic or dangerous pets (crocodiles, cobras) and toys such as a battery-powered bathtub shark that homes in on warm bodies, or a torpedo-firing submarine.

He plays a Jews harp after reading a letter that called the instrument "an obscene instrument of hell," contrasting it with the violin as an angelic instrument.

The centerpiece is the theme of childhood cruelty, prompted by a listener letter about college students in Florida racing giant palmetto bugs (huge cockroaches) by squirting them with lighter fluid and setting them on fire so they streak across the floor as flaming fireballs. Shepherd argues against the myth (promoted by *Lassie*, Dr. Spock, etc.) that children are naturally pure and tender and only become cruel through society. In his view the reverse is true: society restrains innate cruelty.

He expands with a vivid story (from the letter or his own memory) of a neighborhood kid called "the monk" who built an elaborate matchbox guillotine and systematically decapitated flies, aging the heads until rare pure-white specimens appeared - treated like diamonds and obsessively collected by local boys. The narrator steals some; the monk holds his pet chicken hostage and ultimately kills it with a rock. Other examples include dyeing white mice bright colors and (hinted at) more extreme biological experiments, plus using a high-voltage radio transformer to electrocute and explode cockroaches.

Shepherd closes the segment by reinforcing that deep inside every creature lies a "ravening monster," then signs off for the news.

The monologue is classic Shepherd: meandering observational comedy that mixes personal anecdote, absurd cultural trends, listener mail, and a darkly humorous meditation on the gap between sentimental myths about childhood and actual kid behavior.      
  

WOR ID

Time	Station ID (All times approximate)
14:35	. . .you know the usual walking around dumb looking fish which reminds me this is WOR in New York . . .

Commercials (All times approximate)

Time	Sponsor	Notes
13:16	Castro Convertible

Music (All times approximate)

Time	Music Title	Notes
20:47	Unknown Music	P.L.K. Special - Jimmy Yancey

Engineers, Staff, and Guests in Booth

Time	Engineer, Staff or Guest
05:36	Bill
13:58	George
04:52	Jerry Lambert

Instruments and Special Effects Played During the Show

Instruments Played

Jews Harp

Airdate History ' - Original' date is earliest known broadcast)

This Show

		Date	Title
		January 15, 1973	Child Cruelty	WOR Rerun

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"Imagine 4,000 years passing, and you're no longer a memory - Does it seem possible to you?
You better believe it's possible, not only possible but certainty." - Jean Shepherd - October 7, 1971