Did Somebody Step On A Duck?

Esquire has a nice, and free, “What I’ve Learned” from the late (and great) Rodney Dangerfield. He didn’t have an easy life, and in the face of it his humor was remarkable. Among the gems is this account of how a legend was born:

I started over again with an image: “Nothing goes right.” Then when The Godfather came out, all I heard was, “Show respect. With me, you show respect.” So I changed the image to “I don’t get no respect.” I tried it out in Greenwich Village. I remember the first joke I told: “Even as a kid, I’d play hide and seek and the other kids wouldn’t even look for me.” The people laughed. After the show, they started saying to me, “Me, too—I don’t get no respect.” I figured, let’s try it again.