During a period of upheaval at the company where
I worked, a number of office relocations were
occurring. Having assisted with various
moves, I considered myself quite the expert. So
when I saw two colleagues struggling to carry a
heavy desk up a flight of stairs, I went
over and advised them that the desk would be
much lighter if they removed the drawers. They
duly took out the drawers. Then they
balanced them on top of the desk and continued up the stairs.
- Deborah Hitchin
My sister-in-law, a teacher, was pulled over
for failing to come to a complete stop. The
officer wrote out a ticket and handed it to her
with some advice: "Drive safe."
"Safely," she replied.
"What?" the officer asked.
"You've corrected my driving," she explained.
"Allow me to correct your grammar."
- Therese Jelinski
After his marriage broke up, my manager became
very philosophical. "I guess it was in our stars," he sighed.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Her astrological sign is the one for earth. Mine is the one for water.
Together we made mud."
- Lori Phillips
Clearly I was not going to win the battle of
bulge on my own so I decided to join a gym.
"Before you start working out, we like to do a
health assessment," explained the gym
representative. "When you come in, wear loose fitting clothing."
"If I had loose-fitting clothing, we wouldn't be having this conversation."
-Kelly Blackwell
Zilah, my favourite aunt, is 74 and, as she
herself puts it, she's completely "together."
However, I went to her house the other day and
she appeared to be worried. After much
insistence, she confessed, "Darling, I think I'm
getting old. Yesterday I went to the movies and
rode a cab home."
"And what's wrong with that?"
I inquired. "I completely forgot I'd driven my own car there!"
- José Cláudio Garcia
As I passed the receptionist at our local
senior centre, I noticed that she was rummaging
through the lost-and-found box with one hand
while holding the telephone in the other. "I'm
sorry," she eventually told the caller.
"They're not here. If they turn up, we'll call you at once."
"What were you looking for?" a colleague asked.
"He wanted to know if anyone had turned in his teeth," she replied.
"He needs them for lunch."
- Elsie Morris
News that her third child was going to be a
girl thrilled my cousin, who already had two
boys. "My husband wants to call her Sunny,"
she told me, "and I want to give her Anna as
her middle name in memory of my mum." I thought
they might want to reconsider their
decision, since their birth announcement would
herald the arrival of Sunny Anna Rainey.
- Carolyn Wallis
Our nine-year-old niece slept on the couch in
our computer room during a recent visit.
"Is Uncle Jim an idiot?" she asked her mother the next morning.
"Why would you ask that?" her mother replied.
"He has all these books: Idiot's Guide to Windows,
Idiot's Guide to PowerPoint..."
- James Salt
My 11-year-old brother was making chocolate
chip cookies for the first time when he asked my
mother, "Why do I have to leave the room?"
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Come and look at the recipe," he said. "It
says right here, 'Leave room for spreading.'"
- Scott DeGieo
The plan: to build a garden walkway made up of
dozens of wooden squares. I decided I'd slice
railway ties into five-centimetre thick
pieces for the sections. That's what I told the
clerk at the lumber yard. "You got a power saw?" he asked.
"No," I said. "Can't I just use my hand saw?"
He nodded slowly. "You could. But I just have
one question. How old do you want to be when you finish?"
- Judy Myers
Don't ever pay a surprise visit to a child in
college. You might be the one getting the
surprise. I learned this the hard way when I swung
by my son's campus during a business trip.
Locating what I thought was the building he lived
in, I rang the doorbell. "Yeah?" a voice called
from inside. "Does Dylan Housman live here?"
"Yup," the voice answered. "Leave him on the
front porch. We'll drag him in later."
- Jericho Housman
