Mrs. Smythe was making final arrangements for an elaborate reception.
“Nora,” she said to her veteran servant, “for the first half-hour I want
you to stand at the drawing-room door and call the guests’ names as they
arrive.”
Nora’s face lit up. “Thank you, ma’am,” she replied. “I’ve been wanting
to do that to some of your friends for the last 20 years.”
A bird in the hand is...bad table manners.
Two eggs, a bagel, and a sausage walk into a bar. “Bartender, my friends
and I would like a cold one,” says one of the eggs.
“Sorry,” the barman replies. “We don’t serve breakfast.”
Two hikers were walking through the woods when they suddenly confronted
a giant bear. Immediately, one of the men took off his boots, pulled out
a pair of track shoes, and began putting them on.
“What are you doing?” cried his companion. “We can’t outrun that bear,
even with jogging shoes.”
“Who cares about the bear?” the first hiker replied. “All I have to
worry about is outrunning you.”
I had applied for several scholarships for the upcoming year and was
thrilled to learn that I had won one from my school, the University of
Nevada, Las Vegas. Sometimes such awards are named after places. The
letter the university sent me said that I had won the Las Vegas Strip
Scholarship, named after the street with all the major hotels.
When I told my mother about the award she paused, then asked, “Just what
exactly did you do to win that scholarship?”
An American was being shown a big Soviet sign factory. “We turn out
about 500 signs a week,” proudly said the Russian, “and when business
demands it, we can step it up to 2,000.”
“Amazing!” said the visitor. “By the way, what do the signs say?”
“Elevators not running,” was the answer.
It seems I have spent a lifetime of mouthing mechanically, “Say thank
you. Sit up straight. Use your napkin. Close your mouth when you chew.
Don’t lean back in your chair.” Just when I finally got my husband
squared away, the kids came along.
My husband was building shelves in our bedroom and, intending to
continue his work the next day, left some tools on my dresser, including
a hammer, screwdriver, and chisel.
The following morning, while I was in front of the dresser combing my
hair, my teenage daughter walked in.
“Hi, Mom,” she said, taking a look at the dresser. “Fixing your face?”
When my brother began his psychiatric practice, his first patient was a
particularly good-looking young woman. My brother motioned for her to
lie down on the couch, but the woman hesitated until he reassured her
that it was part of the therapy procedure. Once on the couch, she
smoothed her dress around her legs and began to relax a bit.
“Now then,” he asked, “how did your trouble begin?”
“Just like this,” she said.
On a visit to my doctor, I was pleasantly surprised to find that he had
installed taped music in the waiting room. As I sat there enjoying a
piano recording, I overheard an elderly lady say to her companion, “Just
like these young doctors—a crowded waiting room, and he’s in there
playing the piano!”
One day a man showed up at the office wearing a pair of new shoes made
of turtle skin. When a co-worker asked him how he liked them, he replied
thoughtfully, “Well, they’re the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever worn
but I do have one unusual problem with them. It took me an hour and a
half to walk out of the store.”
“My son had to give up his career because of fallen arches.”
“He’s an athlete?”
“No—an architect.”
One day in early fall a class of second-graders was discussing “What I
want to be when I grow up.” The teacher received the usual replies—a
fireman, a nurse. Then she asked a youngster deep in thought what he
would like to be someday. He looked up with a frown and replied, “I
don’t even know what I want to be for Halloween yet!”
A man, shocked by how his buddy is dressed, asks him, “How long have you
been wearing that bra?”
The friend replies, “Ever since my wife found it in the glove compartment.”
“I wish I had enough money to buy an elephant.”
“What on earth do you need an elephant for?”
“I don’t. I just need the money.”
While I was making farewell visits before moving to a new parish, an
elderly member of the congregation paid me the compliment of suggesting
that my successor would not be as good as I had been.
“Nonsense,” I replied, flattered.
“No, really,” she insisted. “I’ve lived here under five different
ministers, and each new one has been worse than the last.”
I was administering an achievement test to David, a precocious
six-year-old, and I began by asking him when his birthday was.
“February 20,” was his quick response.
Next I asked him, “What year, David?”
He looked at me quizzically at first and then hit upon the obvious
answer. “Every year,” he said.
“I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife
happy. First, let her think she’s having her way. Second, let her have
it.” —Lyndon B. Johnson
A police officer arrives at the scene of an accident to find a car
smashed into a tree. The officer rushes over to the vehicle and asks the
driver, “Are you seriously hurt?”
“How should I know?” the driver responds. “I’m not a lawyer!”
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he
will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
The young father took a seat on the bus next to an elderly man and
plopped his one-year-old on his lap, just as the little boy began to cry
and fidget.
“That child is spoiled, isn’t he?” the old man remarked.
“No,” said the dad. “They all smell this way.”
I was visiting my son the other night when I asked if I could borrow a
newspaper.
“Dad, this is the 21st century,” he said. “I don’t waste my money on
newspapers. But if you like, you can borrow my iPad.”
I can tell you this: That spider never knew what hit him.
“First, the doctor told me the good news. He said that I was going to
have a disease named after me.” —Steve Martin
“Hello, Reverend Smith? This is the Internal Revenue Service. Is Samuel
Jones a member of your congregation?”
“He is.”
“Did he donate $10,000 to the church?”
“He will.”
One Sunday, a minister played hooky from church so he could shoot a
round of golf. St. Peter, looking down from Heaven, seethed. “You’re
going to let him get away with this, God?”
The Lord shook his head.
The minister took his first shot. The ball soared through the air 420
yards and dropped into the cup for a hole in one. St. Peter was
outraged. “I thought you were going to punish him!”
The Lord shrugged. “Who’s he going to tell?”
I’d offered to drive my mother-in-law to the doctor’s. But when I
arrived at her house, I found her gossiping away with a neighbor.
“Mom, we’ve got to go,” I interjected, but she couldn’t hear me over the
chatter. “Mom!” I repeated as I pulled her away.
“Sorry, but I didn’t know what to do,” she said, getting into the car.
“That woman wouldn’t stop listening to me.”
If Dracula can’t see his reflection in the mirror, how come his hair is
always so neatly combed? —Steven Wright
A brain walks into a bar and takes a seat. “I’d like some wings and a
pint of beer, please,” he says.
“Sorry, but I can’t serve you,” the bartender replies. “You’re out of
your head.”
I hang on to my old, beat-up appliances as long as they keep working. I
thought my wife shared, or at least accepted, my philosophy. But the
other morning, I saw a note posted in front of my 15-year-old
coffeemaker: “Jurassic Perk.” —Bill Schmitt
Three rough-looking bikers stomp into a truck stop where a grizzled
old-timer is having breakfast.
One of the bikers extinguishes his cigarette in the old guy’s pancakes.
The second biker spits a wad of chewing tobacco into his coffee. The
third biker dumps the whole plate onto the floor.
Without a word of protest, the old guy pays his bill and leaves.
“Not much of a man, was he?” says one of the bikers.
“Not much of a driver, either,” says the waitress. “He just backed his
truck over three motorcycles.”
As the hedge fund manager gets out of his brand-new Porsche, a truck
goes racing by, taking off the door. “My Porsche! My beautiful silver
Porsche is ruined!” he screams.
A police officer on the scene shakes his head in disgust. “I can’t
believe you,” he says. “You’re so focused on your possessions that you
didn’t even realize your left arm was torn off when the truck hit you.”
The hedge fund manager looks down in absolute horror. “Oh, no!” he
cries. “My Rolex!”
After writing a speech for class, my daughter asked for input. I
listened to her talk about sexually transmitted diseases, then gave my
opinion.
“It’s great,” I said. “There’s one sentence in particular that I like.”
“Which one?” she asked.
“The one where you write, ‘The only way other than abstinence to be sure
that you will not contract an STD is to remain in a monotonous
relationship.'”
Few people know what a quartermaster does. So during my aircraft
carrier’s Family Day, I demonstrated a procedure called semaphore—I
grabbed my flags and signaled an imaginary boat.
When finished, I pointed to a little girl in front and asked, “Now do
you know what I do?”
“Yes,” she said. “You’re a cheerleader.”
The topic of the day at Army Airborne School was what you should do if
your parachute malfunctions. We had just gotten to the part about
reserve parachutes when another student raised his hand.
“If the main parachute malfunctions,” he said, “how long do we have to
deploy the reserve?”
Looking the trooper square in the face, the instructor replied, “The
rest of your life.”
With a pile of 300 resumes on his desk and a need to pick someone
quickly, my boss told me to make calls on 50 and toss the rest.
“Throw away 250 resumes?” I asked, shocked. “What if the best candidates
are in there?”
“You have a point,” he said. “But then again, I don’t need people with
bad luck around here.”
The English language often got the better of my German grandfather, a
pastor. During one service, he announced that two members of his flock
were getting married.
“You’re all invited to the wedding,” he told the congregation. “And also
to the parish hall afterward for the conception.”
Randy Pausch is a renowned computer science professor, but that didn’t
carry much weight with his mother. After he got his PhD, she introduced
him to friends by saying, “This is my son. He’s a doctor, but not the
kind who helps people.”
Scene: A morning with my six-year-old granddaughter, Emma.
Me: Would you like bacon and eggs for breakfast?
Emma: I only like eggs when they’re mixed with something.
Me: Like omelets?
Emma: No, like brownies.
Before you marry a person, you should first make them use a computer
with slow internet to see who they really are. —Will Ferrell
About a week after my son left for boot training, I happened to go into
his room for an afternoon nap. His bed was still warm and cozy, and I
seemed to feel his presence. I wrote and told him that either my mind
was playing tricks on me or some supernatural phenomenon had comforted me.
I was still trying to figure out the “miraculous” warmth when his reply
came. “Sorry, Mother, I forgot. Turn off my electric blanket.”
Mr. and Mrs. Shaw were on safari in Africa, walking through the jungle.
Suddenly a huge lion sprang out of the bushes and seized Mrs. Shaw,
dragging her off.
“Shoot!” she screamed to her husband. “Shoot!”
“I can’t!” he shouted back. “I’ve run out of film!”
Zen koans for the Internet age
• If an anonymous comment goes unread, is it still irritating?
• What is the sound of no hands texting?
• If nobody likes your selfie, what is the value of the self?
• To see a man’s true face, look to the photos he hasn’t posted.
After finishing our Chinese food, my husband and I cracked open our
fortune cookies.
Mine read, “Be quiet for a little while.”
His read, “Talk while you have a chance.”
A last-minute filer walked into our state income tax office and handed
me his returns. Just as he did, a peal of laughter could be heard in
another room.
Glaring at me, he grumbled, “What are they doing back there, counting
the money?”
Pastor: “Good morning, May. I hear God has seen fit to send you little
twin brothers.”
Little May: “Yes sir, and He knows where the money’s coming from, too. I
heard my daddy say so.”
A little girl had been to school for the first time. When asked what she
had learned, she sighed, hopelessly. “Nuffin’. I’ve got to go back
tomorrow.”
A Stanford University professor took his young son with him on a trip
across the country. One day after their return, a package was delivered
with postage due. Neither the professor nor his wife had the necessary
$3, but their son produced it. Surprised, his mother asked how he came
to have that much money.
“Well,” he said, “Dad was awfully careless with money on our trip and
nearly always left some on the table when we ate. So I just picked it up.”
“I don’t think I look thirty, do you, dear?” asked the wife.
“No, darling, not now,” her husband replied. “But you used to.”
A traveling salesman, caught in a torrential rainstorm, stopped
overnight at a farmhouse. In the morning, he looked out on a flood
coursing through the front yard. He watched pieces of fence, chicken
coops, branches, and an old straw hat floating past with the current.
Then he saw the straw hat come back, upstream past the house! Then he
saw it go down again. Pretty soon it came back upstream—and by now the
salesman wondered if he had gone crazy. Finally he called the farmer’s
daughter.
“Oh,” she said, after a glance out the window, “that must be Grandpa. He
said yesterday that in spite of hell or high water he was going to mow
the yard today.”
Comedian W.C. Fields, describing a town that ran out of whiskey: “We
lived for days on nothing but food and water.”
A young mother paying a visit to her doctor in Providence, Rhode Island,
made no attempt to restrain her five-year-old son, who was ransacking an
adjoining treatment room. But finally an extra-loud clatter of bottles
did prompt her to say, “I hope, doctor, you don’t mind Billy being in
your examining room.”
“No,” said the doctor calmly. “He’ll be quiet in a moment when he gets
to the poisons.”
Probably the reason many a politician stands on his record is to keep
voters from examining it. —Cy N. Peace
Dad loves to eat and does so with gusto—to the distress of my mother,
who worries about his weight. One evening Dad was devouring a snack of
cheese spread and crackers. As he scraped the last bit of spread from
its container, he asked Mom if she wanted to save the jar.
“No, it’s okay,” Mom replied. “Go ahead and eat it.”
--
Jacob Kruger
Skype: BlindZA
"...resistance is futile...but, acceptance is versatile..."
