Laugh Yourself Healthy

  Good answer

  As paramedics, my partner and I were dispatched to check on a ninety-two-year-old man who had become disoriented. We decided to take him to the hospital for an evaluation. En route, with siren going, I questioned the man to determine his level of awareness.

  Leaning close, I asked, “Sir, do you know what we’re doing right now?”

  He slowly looked up at me, then gazed out the ambulance window. “Oh,” he replied, “I’d say about fifty, maybe fifty-five.”

  As one ages, it is important to remember which pocket has the pills and which pocket has the change. Yesterday I felt a heart pain and took three nickels.

  Spunky

  An old lady who lived on the third floor of a boarding house broke her leg. When the doctor put a cast on it, he warned her not to climb any stairs. Several months later, the doctor took off the cast.

  “Can I climb stairs now?” asked the little old lady.

  “Yes,” the doctor replied.

  “Thank goodness!” she said. “I’m sick and tired of shinnying up and down that drainpipe!”

  A long life

  The oldest inhabitant had celebrated his hundredth birthday, and the reporter of a local paper called on him for an interview. Having congratulated the old fellow, the reporter asked a few questions.

  “To what do you attribute your longevity?” he inquired.

  The centenarian paused a moment and then, holding up his hand and ticking the items off his fingers, began, “I never smoked, drank alcoholic liquors, or overate, and I always rise at six in the morning.”

  “But,” protested the reporter, “I had an uncle who acted in that way, yet he only lived to be eighty. How do you account for that?”

  “He didn’t keep it up long enough,” was the calm reply.

  Gifts for Mom

  Three sons were discussing the gifts they were able to give their elderly mother. The eldest said, “I built a big house for our mother.”

  The second said, “I sent her a Mercedes with a driver.”

  The youngest smiled and said, “I’ve got you both beat. You remember how Mom enjoyed reading the Bible? And you know she can’t see very well. I sent her a remarkable parrot that recites the entire Bible. He’s one of a kind. Mom just has to name the chapter and verse, and the parrot recites it.”

  Soon, Mom sent out her letter of thanks. To her first son: “The house you built is so huge. I live in only one room, but I have to clean the whole house.”

  To her second son: “I am too old to travel. I stay home most of the time. And the driver is rude!”

  To her third son: “You have the good sense to know what your mother likes. The chicken was delicious.”

  Enough said

  A grandmother was giving directions to her grown grandson who was coming to visit with his wife: “You come to the front door of the apartment complex. I am in apartment 14T. There is a big panel at the door. With your elbow, push button 14T. I will buzz you in. Come inside. The elevator is on the right. Get in, and with your elbow, hit 14. When you get out, I am on the left. With your elbow, hit my doorbell.”

  “Grandma, that sounds easy, but why am I hitting all these buttons with my elbows?” the grandson asked.

  “You’re surely not coming empty-handed, are you?”

  A senior moment

  Two elderly ladies had been friends for many decades. Over the years they had shared all kinds of activities and adventures. Through the years they had helped each other raise children, run a business, and bury their husbands. They had shared all the joys and sorrows of a full life.

  Lately, their activities had been limited to meeting a few times a week to play cards and helping each other remember appointments.

  One day they were playing cards when one looked at the other and said, “Now, don’t get mad at me. I know we’ve been friends for a long time, but I just can’t think of your name! I’ve thought and thought, but I can’t remember it. Please tell me what your name is.”

  Her friend looked at her. For at least three minutes, she just stared and glared.

  Finally she said, “How soon do you need to know?”

  Quickies

  Let’s face it. Traveling just isn’t as much fun when all the historical sites are younger than you are.

  Careful

  Two retired lady schoolteachers from Brooklyn, spending a year exploring western Canada, stopped at a small old-fashioned hotel in Alberta recently. One of the pair was inclined to be worrisome when traveling, and she couldn’t rest until she had made a tour of the corridors to hunt out exits in case of fire. The first door she opened, unfortunately, turned out to be that of the public bath, occupied by an elderly gentleman taking a shower.

  “Oh, excuse me!” the lady stammered, flustered. “I’m looking for the fire escape.” Then she ran out.

  To her dismay, she hadn’t got far along the corridor when she heard a shout behind her and, looking around, saw the gentleman, wearing only a towel, running after her. “Where’s the fire?” he yelled.

  Daily quotes

  “If you laugh a lot, when you get older, your wrinkles will be in the right places!”

  The balding middle-aged man asked his barber, “Why do I have to pay full price for a haircut? There’s so little of it.”

  “What you’re paying for mostly is my time searching for it.”

  A tough old cowboy once counseled his grandson that if he wanted to live a long life, the secret was to sprinkle a little gunpowder on his oatmeal every morning.

  The grandson did this religiously, and he lived to the age of ninety-nine!

  When he died, he left fourteen children, twenty-eight grandchildren, thirty-five great-grandchildren, and a fifteen-foot hole in the wall of the crematorium.

  OLD AGE REVISITED

  • You know you’re getting older when you bend over in the morning to tie your shoes and realize you didn’t take them off the night before.

  • I’m getting crow’s feet around my eyes. And I tell you, that crow has big feet!

  Positive attitude

  Friends threw a big party down at the community center for a fellow on his ninety-ninth birthday. A young reporter was on hand to interview the honored guest for the local paper. After the interview was over, the reporter said, “I hope I’ll be back next year to help you celebrate your centennial.”

  “Well, I don’t see why not,” replied the elderly gentleman. “You look healthy enough to me.”

  It’s time for a hearing check

  A ninety-two-year-old man went to the doctor for a physical. A few days later the doctor saw the man walking down the street with a gorgeous young lady on his arm. He smiled at his patient and walked on. The patient smiled back and went on around the block.

  A couple of days later, the doctor talked to the man and said, “You’re really doing great, aren’t you?”

  The old man replied, “Just doing what you said—‘Get a hot mama and be cheerful.’”

  The doctor paused and answered, “I didn’t say that! I said, you’ve got a heart murmur. Be careful.”

  Grandmas

  Two young boys were spending the night at their grandparents’ house. At bedtime, the two boys knelt beside their beds to say their prayers when the younger one began praying at the top of his lungs, “I pray for a new bicycle. I pray for a new Nintendo. I pray for a new VCR.”

  His older brother leaned over and nudged the younger boy. “Why are you shouting your prayers? God isn’t deaf.”

  To which the little brother replied, “No, but Gramma is!”

  GRANDSON (staring at his grandfather): Grandpa, were you on the ark when the Flood came?

  GRANDPA: No, certainly not.

  GRANDSON : Well, then, why weren’t you drowned?

  Too old

  A pious man who had reached the age of one hundred five suddenly stopped going to church. Alarmed by the old fellow’s absence, his pastor went to see him. The preacher asked, “How come, after all o
f these years, we don’t see you at services anymore?”

  The old man looked around and lowered his voice. “I’ll tell you, preacher,” he whispered. “When I got to be ninety, I expected God to take me any day. But then I got to be ninety-five, then one hundred, and then one hundred five. So I figured God is very busy and must’ve forgot about me, and I don’t want to remind Him.”

  Crying man

  When I went to lunch the other day, I noticed an elderly man about seventy-five or eighty years old sitting on a park bench near JCPenney, and he was sobbing his eyes out. I stopped and asked him what was wrong.

  He said, “I have a twenty-two-year-old wife at home. She gets up every morning and makes me pancakes, sausage, fresh fruit, and freshly ground coffee.”

  “Well, then,” I said, “why are you crying?”

  “She also,” he continued, “makes me homemade soup and brownies and loves me half the afternoon.”

  “Then, sir, why are you crying?”

  “For dinner, she makes me a gourmet meal.”

  “But why are you crying?”

  “I can’t remember where I live!”

  “Hey, Earl!”

  “Hi, Clyde!”

  “I can’t remember where I parked my car.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “You can’t find your car either?”

  “Nope, I’m trying to figure out if I drove here or walked.”

  Three elderly ladies who were hard of hearing were riding in a bus together. A couple of windows were open, and one of them said to another, “Windy, isn’t it?”

  One said, “No, it isn’t Wednesday; it’s Thursday!”

  The third one said, “Yes, I’m thirsty too! Let’s get off and have a Coke!”

  YOU KNOW YOU’RE GETTING OLD WHEN . . .

  • You wonder why everyone is starting to mumble.

  • You finally find something you’ve been looking for, for ages but can’t remember WHY you wanted it.

  • You can’t finish a conversation because you don’t remember what you were talking about.

  • You can’t be tried by a jury of your peers because there are none.

  • Everyone is happy to give you a ride because they don’t want you behind the wheel.

  • A passing funeral procession pauses to see if you need a lift.

  • You can remember seeing double-feature movies for a nickel, some with sound.

  • You’re sitting on a park bench, and a Boy Scout comes up and helps you cross your legs.

  • It takes a couple of tries to get over a speed bump.

  • You run out of breath walking down a flight of stairs.

  • Your children begin looking middle-aged.

  • You walk with your head high, trying to get used to your bifocals.

  • You burn the midnight oil until 9:00 p.m.

  • Your little black book contains names ending in MD.

  • You stoop to tie your shoes and wonder what else you can do while you’re down there.

  • In the morning you hear snap, crackle, pop, and it isn’t your breakfast cereal.

  GROWING OLD TOGETHER

  An eighty-year-old couple was worried because they kept forgetting things all the time. The doctor assured them there was nothing seriously wrong except old age, and suggested they carry a notebook and write things down so they wouldn’t forget. Several days later the old man got up to go to the kitchen. His wife said, “Dear, get me a bowl of ice cream while you’re up.”

  “OK,” he said.

  “ . . . and put some chocolate syrup on it and a few cherries on it, too.” Then she added, “You’d better write all this down.”

  “I won’t forget,” he said. Twenty minutes later he came back into the room and handed her a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon.

  She glared at him. “Now, I told you to write it down! I knew you’d forget.”

  “What did I forget?” he asked.

  She replied, “My toast!”

  There it goes again!

  While on a car trip, an elderly couple stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch. After finishing their meal, the elderly woman left her glasses on the table, but she didn’t miss them until they were back on the highway. By then, they had to travel quite a distance before they could find a place to turn around.

  The elderly man fussed and complained all the way back to the restaurant.

  When they finally arrived at the restaurant, as the woman got out of the car to retrieve her glasses, the man yelled to her, “While you’re in there, you might as well get my hat too!”

  Len’s obituary

  Len died, so his wife Lila went to the local paper to put a notice in the obituaries. The gentleman at the counter, after offering his condolences, asked Lila what she would like to say about her husband of thirty-five years.

  Lila replied, “Oh, just put, ‘Len died.’”

  The gentleman, somewhat perplexed, said, “That’s it? Just, ‘Len died?’ Surely there must be something more you’d like to say about Len. If it’s money you’re concerned about, the first five words are free. We really should say something more.”

  So Lila pondered for a few moments and finally said, “OK, then. You can put, ‘Len died. Boat for sale.’”

  A little old couple walked into McDonald’s one cold winter night. They looked out of place, as there were a lot of young couples and families eating there that night. Some of the customers looked at them admiringly, and you could tell what they were thinking: “Look, there is a couple who has been through a lot together, probably sixty or more years.”

  The little old man walked up to the cash register and placed his order for one hamburger, one order of french fries, and one drink. The little old man unwrapped the plain hamburger and carefully cut it in half. He placed one half in front of his wife. Then he counted the french fries, dividing them into two piles, and neatly placed one pile in front of his wife. He took a sip of the drink; his wife took a sip and then set the cup down between them.

  As the man began to eat his few bites of hamburger, the crowd began to get restless. Again, you could tell what they were thinking: “That poor old couple. All they can afford is one meal for the two of them.”

  As the man began to eat his french fries, one young man came over to the old couple’s table. He politely offered to buy another meal for the old couple to eat. The old man replied that they were just fine—they were used to sharing everything.

  The crowd noticed that the little old lady hadn’t eaten a bite. She just sat there watching her husband eat and occasionally taking turns sipping the drink. Again, the young man came over and offered to buy them something to eat.

  This time the lady explained that no, they were used to sharing everything together. As the little old man finished eating and was wiping his face neatly with the napkin, the young man could stand it no longer. Again, he came over to their table and offered to buy some food. After being politely refused again he finally asked a question of the little old lady: “Ma’am, why aren’t you eating? You said that you share everything. What is it that you are waiting for?”

  She answered, “The teeth!”

  Memory

  An old gentleman, confined to a nursing home, was walking down the hallway when he noticed Mrs. Barnstone sitting in a chair in the lounge. He walked up to her and asked her to guess his age.

  “Give me a kiss, and I’ll tell you.”

  So the old gentleman kissed her. “You’re eighty-eight,” answered Mrs. Barnstone.

  “Why, yes! How did you know?”

  “You told me at breakfast.”

  DEALING WITH DYING

  Cemetery

  Two men were walking home after a party and decided to take a shortcut through the cemetery just for laughs. Right in the middle of the cemetery, they were startled by a tap-tapping noise coming from the misty shadows. Trembling with fear, they found an old man with a hammer and chisel, chipping away at one of the headstones.

>   “Mister,” one of them said, after catching his breath, “you scared us half to death—we thought you were a ghost! What are you doing working here so late at night?”

  “They misspelled my name!”

  Fun quotes

  “When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep—not screaming like all the passengers in his car.”

  Old age is when former classmates are so gray and wrinkled and bald they don’t recognize you.

  Final request

  A woman from New York prepared her will and made her final arrangements. As part of these arrangements, she met with her minister to talk about what type of funeral service she wanted. She told him she had two final requests: first, she wanted to be cremated; second, she wanted her ashes to be scattered over Bloomingdale’s.

  “Why Bloomingdale’s?”

  “That way I know my daughters will visit me twice a week.”

  ten

  PURSE STRING MUSINGS

  WHO HOLDS THE PURSE STRINGS?

  A farmer robbed a bank and went to prison. He received a letter from his wife that said: “Here you are in jail, smoking cigarettes from the state, eating their food, and having a good time. I’m at home alone, so who’s going to plow the fields so that I can plant the potatoes?”

  He wrote her back, saying, “Don’t plow the field; that’s where I buried the money!”

  She wrote a note back and said, “Someone must be reading your mail! The sheriff and his men came out yesterday and plowed every inch of the field! What should I do now?”

  He wrote back and said, “Now plant the potatoes.”

  There was a man who had worked all of his life and was a real miser when it came to his money. He loved money more than anything, and just before he died, he said to his wife, “Now listen. When I die, I want you to take all my money and put it in the casket with me, because I want to take my money to the afterlife with me.”

  And so he got his wife to promise him with all of her heart that when he died, she would put all of the money in the casket with him. One day he died. He was stretched out in the casket, the wife was sitting there in black, and her friend was sitting next to her.