I was introduced to Tom Lehrer by a friend of my parents, undoubtedly the most brilliant adult I ever encountered before going off to college. (And maybe the smartest person I ever met, without exception.)

Harlan Herrick married one of my mom's girlfriends after he had graduated from Yale and had won some kind of national intercollegiate chess championship, and was working at IBM as the team leader of the group that was writing FORTRAN, arguably the world's first computer-programming language. He was also being treated for manic depression (what is now known as bipolar disorder), and would eventually die by his own hand.

Anyway, the guy could really play the piano and sing quite well, with tremendous enthusiasm, and his very favorite songs were all from the Tom Lehrer songbook. And he delighted in "scandalizing" me and my younger siblings, performing this stuff that we would never have heard at home.

I absolutely loved the songs, and read his songbook cover to cover. Fifty-plus years later, I can still visualize some of the cartoon-illustrations (specifically, The Old Dope Peddler at his park bench under a street lamp, the boy scouts on the page with Be Prepared,...)