He called in the first prisoner and asked, “What would happen to you if I were to poke out one of your eyes?”
“I would be half blind, of course,” answered the prisoner.
“What would happen,” continued the warden, “if I poked out the other eye?”
“I would be completely blind,” answered the prisoner.
The warden wrote him an afternoon pass. As the prisoner left, he whispered the correct answers to the next eligible prisoner.
The warden called the second prisoner in and asked him, “What would happen if I cut off one of your ears?”
The second prisoner answered, “I would be blind in one eye.”
Confused the warden asked a second question, “What would happen if I cut off your other ear?”
“I would be completely blind,” answered the second prisoner.
“Can you explain your answers?” asked the warden.
“Sure,” smiled the second prisoner. “My hat would fall down over my eyes.”
The warden wrote the pass.
Clever lawyer
The popular mayor, the revered football coach, and a successful attorney were playing poker one evening in the back of the small-town cafe. In walked the sheriff who raided their game and hauled them off before the local judge.
After listening to the sheriff’s story, the judge sternly asked the mayor, “Were you gambling, Mayor?”
“Oh, no! No, Your Honor, I was not gambling,” answered the mayor.
“Well, if you say so, I’ve got to believe you. Dismissed!”
Then he turned to the coach. “Were you gambling, Coach?”
“No, Your Honor, I was not,” replied the successful coach.
“Well, if you say so, I’ve got to believe you. Do well in the regionals Friday night. Dismissed.”
Turning to the lawyer, the judge said, “You were gambling. No use to deny it.”
The lawyer looked the judge coolly in the eye and replied, “With whom?”
Speeding ticket
Two highway patrolmen stopped a man for speeding on the state highway in Waxahachie, Texas. As they were writing up the ticket, one cop turned to the other and said, “How do you spell Waxahachie?”
The other admitted, “I don’t know.”
So the first one said, “What are we going to do? If we spell it wrong, it will get dismissed.”
The second cop said, “Why don’t we just let him go and stop him again when he gets to Waco?”
A highway patrolman stopped a man and said, “I’ve got to give you a ticket. Your taillights are out.”
The man said, “Oh, how terrible.”
The highway patrolman said, “Now, settle down. It’s not that bad. You can get it fixed.”
The man said, “You don’t understand. I want to know what happened to my $60,000 boat I was pulling!”
Explaining the obvious
A truck driver was driving along on the freeway when he saw a sign, “Low bridge ahead.” Before he knew it, the bridge was right ahead of him, and he got stuck under it. Cars were backed up for miles. Finally, a police car came up. The policeman got out of his car and said, “Got stuck, huh?”
The truck driver replied, “No, I was delivering this bridge and ran out of gas.”
Pleading
The judge looked sternly at the two men in his court and asked, “Can’t this case be settled out of court?”
One of the men looked up at the judge and said, “Your Honor, we were trying to do that when the police came.”
Eager beaver
A rookie police officer was assigned to ride in a cruiser with an experienced partner. A call came over the car’s radio telling them to disperse some people who were loitering.
The officers drove to the street and observed a small crowd standing on a corner. The rookie rolled down his window and said, “Let’s get off the corner.”
No one moved, so he barked again, “Let’s get off the corner!”
Intimidated, the group of people began to leave, casting puzzled glances in his direction. Proud of his first official act, the young policeman turned to his partner and asked, “Well, how did I do?”
“Pretty good,” replied the veteran, “especially since that was a bus stop.”
Railroad crossing
In a terrible accident at a railroad crossing, a train smashed into a car and pushed it nearly four hundred yards down the track. Though no one was killed, the driver took the train company to court.
At the trial, the engineer insisted that he had given the driver ample warning by waving his lantern back and forth for nearly a minute. He even stood and convincingly demonstrated how he’d done it. The court believed his story, and the suit was dismissed.
“Congratulations,” his lawyer said to the engineer when it was over. “You did superbly under cross-examination.”
“Thanks,” he said, “but he sure had me worried.”
“How’s that?” the lawyer asked.
“I was afraid he was going to ask if the lantern was lit!”
Recently a poll of people in New York City showed that 80 percent of them wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in the world. Besides, it was reported, it would violate the terms of their parole.
Repeat performance
One night, a lady stumbled into the police station with a black eye. She claimed she heard a noise in her backyard and went to investigate. The next thing she knew, she was hit in the eye and knocked out cold.
An officer was sent to her house to investigate, and he returned a half hour later with a black eye as well.
“What happened? Did you get hit by the same person?” asked his captain.
“No, sir,” he replied, “but I did step on the same rake.”
Winning the job
A soldier was asked to report to headquarters for assignment. The sergeant said, “We have a critical shortage of typists. I’ll give you a little test. Type this,” he ordered, giving him a pamphlet to type and a sheet of paper, and pointing to a desk across the room that held a typewriter and an adding machine.
The soldier, quite reluctant to become a clerk-typist, made a point of typing very slowly, and he made sure that his work contained as many errors as possible. After the soldier finished, he handed the typed paper to the sergeant who barely glanced at it. “That’s fine. Report for work tomorrow at 8:00.”
“But aren’t you going to check the test?” asked the soldier.
The sergeant grinned. “You passed the test before you started typing— when you sat down at the typewriter instead of at the adding machine.”
Well, you asked
A politician asked his friend, a professor of philosophy, for some advice on presenting interesting speeches. The professor suggested, “You should start with a question like, ‘Why are we all here?’”
The politician tried out the idea before various audiences, and it went well. Well, that is, until he somehow got persuaded to speak to the inmates of a mental health clinic.
He began his usual way, “Why are we all here?”
Quick as a flash came back a reply from a voice in the audience, “Because we aren’t all there.”
A mother’s lament
One mother was complaining to another. “Kids these days are so fickle. My daughter has changed majors three times this year!”
“I didn’t know she was in college,” said her friend.
“She’s not. She’s in the army!”
Not using the head
The police were sure the criminal was inside the movie theater. The chief told the sergeant to surround the building and have all the exits watched. An hour later, the sergeant returned with his men. “He got away,” he told the chief.
“Got away!” the chief roared. “Did you guard all the exits like I told you?”
“Sure.”
“Then how did he get away?”
“Don’t know. Maybe he used one of the entrances.”
Knowing the future
LOUIE: Wow, that’s incredible. How did he know all of that?
BENNY: A judge told him.
Following the law
Two good old boys were driving a truck through the back roads of West Virginia when they came to an overpass with a sign that read, “Clearance 11'3".”
They got out and measured their rig, which was 12'4". “What do you think?” asked one as they climbed back into the cab.
The driver looked to his left, then to his right, and checked the rear-view mirror. “Not a cop in sight. Let’s take a chance.”
A faxful of stories
The prosecuting attorney approached the witness. “Do you happen to know any of the people you see in the jury box?”
The witness looked them over and thought carefully before replying.
“Yes, I know over half of them.”
“Keep in mind the oath you have made before this court,” continued the attorney. “Can you swear that you know more than half of them?”
“Why, I certainly can!” fired back the witness. “In fact, I think I know more than all of them put together!”
At the conclusion of the trial, the jury found the defendant not guilty.
The defendant was so happy that he hugged his lawyer. His lawyer congratulated him and handed him a bill.
The happy defendant looked at the bill and gulped. “This says I have to pay ten thousand dollars now and five hundred a month for five years! It sounds like I’m buying a Mercedes-Benz!”
The lawyer smiled, “You are.”
Carjacking foiled
An elderly woman did her shopping and upon return found four males in her car. She dropped her shopping bags and drew her handgun, proceeding to scream at them at the top of her voice that she knows how to use it and that she will if required . . . so get out of the car.
The four men didn’t wait around for a second invitation to get out and ran like mad, while the lady proceeded to load her shopping bags into the back of the car and get into the driver’s seat.
Small problem, however—her keys wouldn’t fit in the ignition.
Her car, identical to the car she first approached, was parked four spaces further down. So she moved her bags into her own car and drove to the police station. The sergeant she told her story to nearly split his sides with laughter and pointed to the other end of the counter where four very nervous males were reporting a carjacking by a mad, elderly woman. No charges were filed.
Thanks, I think
Since he was a Texan being tried in New York, the young man felt he didn’t have a prayer in beating the murder rap. Thus, shortly before the jury was to retire, he bribed one of the jurors to find him guilty of manslaughter, not murder.
The jury was out for days, after which they returned a verdict of manslaughter. Cornering the bribed juror, the Texan whispered, “Thanks a million. How did you manage it?”
“It wasn’t easy,” admitted the bribed juror. “All the others wanted to acquit you.”
Better rephrase that
At the police station, Bubba explained to the police officer why his cousin shot him. “Well,” Bubba began, “we was havin’ a good time drinking when my cousin Ray picked up his shotgun and said, ‘Hey, do ya fellows wanna go hunting?’”
“And then what happened?” the officer interrupted.
“From what I remember,” Bubba said, “I stood up and said, ‘I’m game.’”
Running out of excuses
A police officer pulled over a guy who had been weaving in and out of the lanes. He walked up to the guy’s window and said, “Sir, I need you to blow into this breathalyzer tube.”
The man responded, “Sorry, officer, I can’t do that. I am an asthmatic. If I do that, I’ll have a really bad asthma attack.”
“OK. I need you to come down to the station to give a blood sample.”
“I can’t do that, either. I am a hemophiliac. If I do that, I’ll bleed to death.”
“Well, then, we need a urine sample,” insisted the police officer.
“Sorry. I am also a diabetic. If I do that, I’ll get really low blood sugar.”
“All right. Then I need you to come out here and walk this white line,” added the officer.
“I can’t do that, officer.”
“Why not?” asked the exasperated officer.
“Because I’m drunk.”
Sad truth
A reporter had done a story on gender roles in Kuwait several years before the Gulf War, and she noted then that women customarily walked about ten feet behind their husbands.
She returned to Kuwait recently and observed that the men now walked several yards behind their wives. She approached one of the women for an explanation. “This is marvelous,” she said. “What enabled women here to achieve this reversal of roles?”
The Kuwaiti woman sadly replied, “Land mines.”
Mistaken identity
A drunk phoned the police to report that thieves had been in his car. “They’ve stolen the dashboard, the steering wheel, the brake pedal, even the accelerator!” he shouted.
The police were dumbfounded and dispatched an officer to the scene. However, before the police arrived, the phone rang a second time with the same voice on the line. “Never mind,” he said with a hiccup. “I got in the back seat by mistake.”
Success
The police recently busted a man selling “secret formula” tablets he claimed gave eternal youth. When going through their files, the police noticed that the same man had been charged with the same criminal medical fraud four previous times: in 1794, 1856, 1928, and 1983.
Correction
A dictator was in his office alone when his bodyguards heard a loud explosion inside his office. Rushing in, they saw him on the floor, face bloodied, and they asked, “What happened, Mr. Chairman?”
“A letter bomb,” whispered the dictator.
“But a letter bomb would have wounded your hands, not your mouth,” replied one of his experienced men.
“But I was sealing it,” explained the dictator.
The kindness of a stranger
A man came out of a shopping mall to find that the side of his parked car was rammed in. He began to get upset but was relieved to see a note under the windshield wiper.
He took the note and began to read: “As I’m writing this, about a dozen people are watching me. They think I’m giving you my name, phone number, and insurance company. But I’m not.”
Sweet revenge
A woman was charged with a traffic violation. When asked for her occupation, she said she was a schoolteacher. The judge rose from the bench. “Madam, I have waited years for a schoolteacher to appear before this court.” He smiled with delight. “Now sit down at that table and write, ‘I will not pass through a red light’ five hundred times.”
Huh?
The Baltimore Police Department, famous for its superior K-9 unit, was somewhat taken aback by a recent incident. Returning home from work, a young worker had been shocked to find her house ransacked and burglarized. She telephoned the police at once and reported the crime.
The police dispatcher broadcast the call on the channels, and a K-9 unit patrolling nearby was the first on the scene.
As the K-9 officer approached the house with his dog on a leash, the woman ran out on the porch, clapped a hand to her head, and moaned, “I come home from work to find all my possessions stolen. I call the police for help, and what do they do? They send a blind policeman!”
A police officer pulled over a pickup truck from out of state on Highway 51. He said to the driver, “Got any ID?”
The driver said, “’Bout what?”
Fishing with a license
A couple of young boys were fishing at their favorite spot when the game warden jumped out of the bushes. One boy threw down his rod and took off through the woods with the ward
en hot on his heels.
After running half a mile, the boy stopped to catch his breath, and the game warden snagged him.
“Let me see a license, boy!” snapped the warden as he impatiently waited for the boy to dig through his wallet.
The boy pulled out his wallet and showed the warden his fishing license.
“Well, son,” said the warden, “you must be dumber than a box of rocks! You don’t have to run from me—you have a valid license!”
“Well, I do,” said the boy, “but the guy back there doesn’t.”
A police car pulled up in front of Grandma Betty’s house, and Grandpa Benny got out. The polite policeman explained that this elderly gentleman said that he was lost in the park and couldn’t find his way home.
“Oh, Benny,” said Grandma, “you’ve been going to that park for thirty years! How could you get lost?”
Leaning close to Grandma so the policeman couldn’t hear, Benny whispered, “I wasn’t lost . . . I was just too tired to walk home.”
Keeping track
A beautiful blonde was visiting Washington DC. This was her first time to the city, so she wanted to see the Capitol building. Unfortunately, she couldn’t find it, so she asked a police officer for directions. “Excuse me, officer,” the girl said. “How do I get to the Capitol building?”
The officer said, “Wait here at this bus stop for the number 54 bus. It’ll take you right there.”
She thanked the officer, and he drove off.
Three hours later the police officer came back to the same area and, sure enough, the girl was still waiting at the same bus stop. The officer got out of his car and said, “Excuse me, but to get to the Capitol building I said to wait here for the number 54 bus. That was three hours ago. Why are you still waiting?”
The girl said, “Don’t worry, officer. It won’t be long now. The 45th bus just went by!”
Criminal comments
The judge said to the defendant, “I thought I told you I never wanted to see you in here again.”
“Your Honor,” the criminal said, “that’s what I tried to tell the police, but they wouldn’t listen.”
One too many questions
Laugh Yourself Healthy Page 14