There was a big book full of cartoons which had appeared in The New Yorker magazine. Somehow the book was at our house -- picked up second-hand, or borrowed from the library.
One cartoon showed a man and woman walking along. The man is ahead, the (one assumed) wife was coming along behind, deeply involved in reading a book she's carrying, while walking.
It's raining, in the cartoon: the rain is pounding down all around the husband and wife. Lines of rain are all over the square; it's raining on the man, soaking him.
But the rain disappears just above the wife's head; it comes down from the sky above her, then just goes away before reaching her.
They're walking along like that, one getting soaked, the other not.
The husband is speaking, with a grumpy, impatient expression on his face.
Caption says, "All right, stop reading The Power of Positive Thinking!"
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Had to ask my parents what that cartoon meant.
One or both of them told me there was this book about thinking positively. That was the title, and the author was Norman Vincent Peale, a minister at the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City.
It sounded very grand, to me.
I didn't read The Power-Positive until years later, as an adult.
It really provided a blueprint for how I think about things.
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