Helen:

I spent a couple months as a substitute school teacher, with no background in it whatsoever. I had a class late in the school year of seniors in chemistry in the afternoon. They had NO motivations to behave, they already knew if and what colleges they were going to, I don't know chemistry, and it was the last class of the day for some of them. As they began to reenact scenes from the previous night's Seinfeld show, I hit them with a couple, starting with the man who goes into a bar and asks for a glass of water. It takes about five minutes for a crowd to figure that out, then they're hooked. I can't remember the last one of the day, but they hadn't gotten it when the bell rang, and I didn't give it away ("Save it for college!" I said). That summer I was taking someone to the movies and the ticket taker suddenly pulled the tix back and said: "Not until you tell me the answer!"

I'll look for that lateral thinking book.