Hostage, 10, Took It Like a Man

--A 10-year-old boy held hostage by a gunman at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport said that he was never frightened during the eight-hour ordeal, because his captor was “kind of a nice guy” although he made frequent threats to kill him. “No, I didn’t think he’d shoot me,” said Michael Caruso Jr. during a news conference with his parents, Cindy and Michael Caruso of Sunrise, Fla., and his 6-year-old sister, Rosey. Solah abu Kassem, who released Michael unharmed, was being held in the Dallas County jail in lieu of $750,000 bond. Authorities credited Michael with helping to calm the agitated gunman, who grabbed the fifth-grader as he was standing in a ticket line with his parents and demanded to be flown to Egypt. While he was being held, Michael said, he pretended that he was playing a game of “Guns” with a friend.

--Give Vice President George Bush an “A” for effort--but an “F” for spelling. In a letter to a Georgia middle school language class, in which he admitted using bad grammar on television last Election Day, he compounded his error. Bush was taken to task in a letter from the “Grammar Court” in Geri Pope’s eighth-grade class in Nashville. The court tries offenders of the English language. The students wrote Bush: “In an answer to a question, you replied the Republicans ‘won’t do too bad.’ This is incorrect usage of the adjective ‘bad,’ since adjectives cannot modify adverbs or verbs. You should have said the Republicans ‘won’t do too badly.’ ” He was fined 25 cents. A contrite Bush wrote back: “You are absolutely correct. I made a bad error by using ‘bad’ badly. My bad grammer (sic) was exceeded only by my bad judgment in predicting the election results.” According to Nashville Middle School Principal Donald G. Connell, the word “grammar” was misspelled throughout the letter. This time, the court opted for leniency. Connell said: “I don’t think we’re going to try him on that. He was a good sport.”

--The Millard Fillmore Society, dedicated to recognizing mediocrity in whatever form it takes, has awarded its 1986 Mediocrity Medal to Halley’s comet. The comet, society Vice President Phil Arkow said, was “all fluff and glitter, with no substance and pretty far out. . . . Like Millard Fillmore, it was a child of an earlier century. It came and it went with great expectations going unfulfilled.” TV talk-show hostess Joan Rivers was the runner-up. Other past winners of the dubious distinction include former Interior Secretary James Watt, “Tonight Show” regular Ed McMahon, model-actress Brooke Shields and Billy Carter, brother of former President Jimmy Carter. Fillmore, born Jan. 7, 1800, was elected vice president in 1848 and became the nation’s 13th President after the sudden death of Zachary Taylor.