If Peter was nine, and a new boy came to St. Norbert’s Home for Wayward Boys who said he was ten, why, then, Peter would declare himself eleven. Also… - Dave Barry

It was the ancient Egyptians who first figured out that numbers could, if you added and subtracted them, be used to form mathematics; this made it possible, for the first time, to build the pyramids as well as keep score in bowling.

So for a while there, Eddie was one happy ship's officer. But like most men whose brains are in their dicks, he was not really thinking things through. (Chapter 5)

There were automobiles, but they lacked many of the features that automobiles have today, such as a working motor. In the Barry household, we had a series of cars named (these were all real Barry cars) the "Rambler," the "Minx," the "Metropolitan," and the "Valiant." You could rely on these cars- rain or shine, hot or cold- to not start. The "Metropolitan," in particular, was no more capable of internal combustion than of producing a litter of puppies.