LAUGH LINES from Reader's Digest

"I believe in an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out."
— Arthur Hays Sulzberger, former New York Times publisher

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All Creatures Great and Small

One beautiful morning, my husband and I decided to go for a drive in the country. Unfortunately, no matter which road we took, we kept seeing dead possums lying on the shoulder.

After several miles of this, my husband turned to me and said, "Now I think I know the answer to the age-old question 'Why did the chicken cross the road?'"

"What is it?" I asked.

"Well," he replied, "it was to prove to the possums that it could be done."
Submitted by Juanita Page

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Some of my co-workers and I decided to remove the small, wooden suggestion box from our office because it had received so few entries. We stuck the box on top of a seven-foot-high metal storage cabinet and then promptly forgot about it. Months later, when the box was moved during remodeling, we found a single slip of paper inside. The suggestion read, "Lower the box!"
Submitted by Frank J. Monaco

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One October my wife and I spent a vacation on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. We were eager to visit the rain forests near the coast, but we heard that snow slides had made some of the roads impassable. Although apprehensive about the conditions we might run into, we drove on.

Sure enough, we had gone only a short way up the Hoh Rain Forest road when we saw a sign: "Ice 10 miles."

Five miles farther on there was another: "Ice 5 miles."

The next one was: "Ice 1/2 mile." We practically crept that half-mile.

Then we came to the last sign. It was outside a small grocery, and it read: "Ice 50 cents."

Submitted by Gifford S. Walker

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Aging Gracelessly

One of the salesclerks at a local stationery store had to be a good sport to survive her 40th birthday. Not only did she have to put up with two large banners that announced "Cathy is 40 today!" but she also had to spend the day with other saleswomen who wore tags saying "I'm not Cathy."
Submitted by Helen Becouvarakis

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My son, Barry, came home from a three-month deployment aboard his submarine, and told us that one of the ways the sailors kept up morale was to make wooden cars out of kits and run derby races.

"What do you do for a ramp?" my husband inquired.

"Don't need one," Barry said. "We just put the cars on the floor and then tilt the sub."
Submitted by Mary C. Ryan

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