Reader's Digest Funny Family Jokes
Page 7
STEVEN WRIGHT
AN APPLE FOR THE TEACHER
Parents are justifiably upset when their children don’t get into the college of their choice. As an admissions counselor for a state university, I took a call from an irate mother demanding to know why her daughter had been turned down. Avoiding any mention of the transcript full of Ds, I explained that her daughter just wasn’t as “competitive” as the admitted class. “Why doesn’t she try another school for a year and then transfer?” I suggested.
“Another school!” exclaimed Mom. “Have you seen her grades?”
• SHALONDA DEGRAFFINRIED
I’d contacted a butcher to get sheep brains for a lecture in my neuroanatomy class and said I’d be by to pick them up. But when I arrived at his shop, it was closed. Taped to the door was this note: “Teacher, your brains are next door at the barbershop.”
• JOHN FISHER
A middle school in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, encourages free thinking. A sign outside the school reads, “You are unique–just like everyone else.”
• NAN FRONAL
Question on second-grade math quiz: “Tony drank 1/6 of a glass of juice. Emily drank 1/4 of a glass of juice. Emily drank more. Explain.”
My grandson’s answer: “She was more thirsty.”
• JOANN MILLINGTON
“Give me a sentence about a public servant,” the teacher instructed her second-grade student.
“The fireman came down the ladder pregnant,” he answered.
“Um . . . do you know what pregnant means?”
“Yes,” said the boy. “It means carrying a child.”
• EARL B. CHILD
A schoolteacher was arrested at the airport for trying to go through security with a slide rule and a calculator. He was charged with carrying weapons of math instruction.
“I did most of it myself, but I DID get help from an ‘UNNAMED SOURCE.’ ”
As a fundraiser, the chemistry club designed and sold T-shirts. Written across the front were our top “Stupid Chemistry Sayings”:
• Have yourself a Merry Little Bismuth
• What do you do with dead people? Barium
• You stupid boron!
• We hope your year is very phosphorous.
• SHANE HART
In honor of Memorial Day, the teacher I worked with read the Constitution to her third-grade class. After reading “We the people,” she paused to ask the children what they thought that meant. One boy raised his hand and asked, “Is that like ‘We da bomb?’ ”
• RONDA DECKARD
The morning he began kindergarten, I told my son about the great adventure that awaited him. “You’re going to learn so many things,” I said, “like how to read and write!”
When I picked him up from school later, I asked how it went.
“Well,” he said, “I still can’t read or write.”
• DEBBIE CRISS
Teacher: What is an evangelist?
Student: Someone who plays the evangelo.
• DONNA SAPERSTONE
* * *
I think the Discovery Channel should be on a different channel every day.
A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not opened.
FRANK ZAPPA
Walking through the hallways at the middle school where I work, I saw a new substitute teacher standing outside his classroom with his forehead against a locker. I heard him mutter, “How did you get yourself into this?”
Knowing he was assigned to a difficult class, I tried to offer moral support. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Can I help?”
He lifted his head and replied, “I’ll be fine as soon as I get this kid out of his locker.”
• HELEN BUTTON
Teacher: Why can’t freshwater fish live in salt water?
Student: The salt would give them high blood pressure.
• JILL SAINTE
At the school where my mother worked, the two first-grade teachers were named Miss Paine and Mrs. Hacking. One morning the mother of a student called in the middle of a flu epidemic to excuse her daughter from school.
“Is she in Paine or Hacking?” the school secretary asked.
“She feels fine,” said the confused mom. “We have company and I’m just keeping her home.”
• MERRI LEE COLVIN
Seen outside a professor’s door at Georgetown College: “Psychology 376: Dying, Grieving, and Coping. Take for your major or minor, or as a fun elective.”
• REBECCA ABBOTT
“I think someone who handles the pressures of kindergarten should be able to stay up past eight o’clock.”
During my first meeting with my physically challenged students, I assured them that most people are handicapped in some way.
“Look at me,” I said. “My eyes are so bad, I need to wear glasses. Because I can barely hear, I need a hearing aid. And look at my ears–they’re much bigger than they should be.”
From the back, a boy added, “And your nose too.”
• ROBERT MEHL, SR.
STRAIGHT-A STUDENT
Driving my car one afternoon, I rolled through a stop sign. I was pulled over by a police officer, who recognized me as his former English teacher.
“Mrs. Brown,” he said, “those stop signs are periods, not commas.”
• GAIL BROWN
When my summer teaching post in the Czech Republic came to an end, I told my students my next teaching destination would be in Australia, “the land down under.” On my final day, they presented me with a card. The carefully worded note read, “Good luck, and happy journey to the underworld.”
• LOURDES H. GENOSA
A police car with flashing lights pulled me over near the high school where I teach. As the officer asked for my license and registration, my students began to drive past. Some honked their horns, others hooted, and still others stopped to admonish me for speeding.
Finally the officer asked me if I was a teacher at the school, and I told him I was.
“I think you’ve paid your debt to society,” he concluded with a smile, and left without giving me a ticket.
• MARK JORDAN
Teacher: Mira went to the library at 5:15 and left at 6:45. How long was Mira at the library?
Student: Not long.
• LISA KARNES
A synonym is a word you use when you can’t spell the first word you thought of.
BURT BACHARACH
A student in my math course at Ohlone State College in Fremont, Calif., developed a severe case of tendinitis. Since she couldn’t write, she brought a video camera to tape my lectures. After three or four classes, I asked her if she found the method satisfactory. She said it was working quite well, even better than note-taking.
“Actually,” she confessed, “I have another reason for doing this. When I told my mother you were a widower, she wanted to see what you look like.”
• GERSON WHEELER
Early one morning, a mother went in to wake up her son. “Wake up, son. It’s time to go to school!”
“But why, Mom? I don’t want to go.”
“Give me two reasons why you don’t want to go.”
“Well, the kids hate me for one, and the teachers hate me, too!”
“Oh, that’s no reason not to go to school. Come on now and get ready.”
“Give me two reasons why I should go to school.”
“Well, for one, you’re 52 years old. And for another, you’re the principal!”
A month after Donald MacDonald started at Harvard, his mother called from Scotland. “And how are the American students, Donald?” she asked.
“They’re so noisy,” he complained. “One neighbor endlessly bangs his head against the wall, while another screams all night.”
“How do you put up with it?”
“I just ignore them and play my bagpipes.”
• MARILYN ADKINS
“Guess what?” yelled my high schooler as he burst throu
gh the door. “I got a 100 on the Spanish quiz that I didn’t even know we were having.”
“That’s great!” I said. “But why didn’t you know about the quiz?”
“Because our teacher told us about it in Spanish.”
• KATHLEEN ZELL
My son, a high school senior, went to take a national literacy test recently. A sign on the classroom door read, “Literacy Testing in Progress: Do Not Distrub!”
• CATHY DILLARD
After a day of listening to my eighth graders exchange gossip, I decided to quote Mark Twain to them: “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
After considering my words, one of my students asked, “What does it mean to remove all doubt?”
• SHANNON WILSON
During my eighth-grade sex education class, no one could answer the question “What happens to a young woman during puberty?” So I rephrased it: “What happens to young women as they mature?”
One student answered: “They start to carry a purse.”
• ELIZABETH ZICHA
* * *
I’m reading a great book about antigravity–I just can’t put it down.
When our school librarian announced she was changing schools, my fellow teacher asked a student, “Why do you think Ms. Richardson is leaving?”
The third grader opined, “Because she’s read all our books?”
• SCOTT MUIR
FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION
I was a percussion major when I was in college, and during a rehearsal of the student orchestra, my section kept making mistakes.
“When you’re too dumb to play anything,” the professor conducting us sneered, “they give you a couple of sticks, put you in the back and call you a percussionist.”
A friend next to me whispered, “And if you’re too dumb to hang on to both sticks, they put you in the front and call you a conductor.”
• JIM LOPARDO
After his first day back at school in the fall, I asked my son if the high school students were wearing anything new. “Well,” he replied, “a lot of the fellows are showing up in see-through mustaches.”
• BEATRICE W. COLVIN
I recently ran into an old student of mine, who said, “I always liked you. You never had favorites. You were mean to everyone.”
• LOIS HENRY
When I became a licensed chiropractor, I moved back to my hometown and soon had a thriving practice. One morning I saw a new patient whom I recognized as my old high school principal.
“Gee,” I said nervously, “I’m a little surprised to see you here.”
“Why?” he replied. “You certainly spent a great deal of time in my office.”
• D. C. REGITZ
I remember once at school we had a spelling bee, and also an ant who could tap dance.
• GARY DELANEY
“Going to school is like playing video games . . . you’ve got to get through twelve levels before you’re finished.”
One afternoon while I was visiting my library, I noticed a group of preschoolers gathered for story time. The book they were reading was “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.” After the librarian finished the first page, she asked the children, “Do you think she’ll die?”
“Nope,” a little girl in the back said. “I saw this last night on ‘Fear Factor.’ ”
• BRIANNE BURCL
During our computer class, the teacher chastised one boy for talking to the girl sitting next to him.
“I was just asking her a question,” the boy said.
“If you have a question, ask me,” the teacher tersely replied.
“Okay,” he answered. “Do you want to go out with me Friday night?”
• TRACY MAXWELL
Our local newspaper lists recipients of school awards. Beneath one photo, the caption read, “This year’s Perfect Attendance Awards go to Ann Stein and Bradley Jenkins. Not present for photo: Bradley Jenkins.”
• ASHLEY DEROCHER
A friend was assigned a new post teaching English to inmates in prison. Feeling a little nervous on his first day, he began by asking the class a basic question:
“Now, who can tell me what a sentence is?”
• PETER MCDONAGH
* * *
My parents sent me to military school in Switzerland. There they taught me how to be neutral.
When they said to you at graduation “follow your dreams,” did anybody say you had to wake up first?
BILL COSBY
Danny was hard to miss at our school. A Civil War buff who forever wore his Confederate overcoat, he was a friend to all. When he was passed over during the vote for senior superlatives, many of us were disappointed; surely there must have been some category suitable for him.
The whole school was pleased, therefore, when the yearbook adviser surprised us with an additional photo. There was Danny, decked out in his gray coat, with the caption: “Most Likely to Secede.”
• MICHAEL G. STEWART
Kids have a greater need for speed than classroom computers can deliver. Impatient to turn in his term paper, one restless student kept clicking the “Print” command. The printer started to churn out copy after copy of the kid’s ten-page report.
The topic? “Save Our Trees.”
• KEN CUMMINGS
During a grammar lesson Mrs O’Neill said, “Paul, give me a sentence with a direct object.”
Paul replied, “Everyone thinks you are the best teacher in the school.”
“Thank you, Paul,” said Mrs O’Neill, “but what is the object?”
“To get the best mark possible,” said Paul.
• SHAUN MILLER
Teacher: Millie, give me a sentence starting with i.
Millie: I is . . .
Teacher: No, Millie. Always say, “I am.”
Millie: Okay, I am the ninth letter of the alphabet.
You just can’t trust atoms–they make up everything.
ALAN ZOLDAN
One of our projects at military leadership school called for us to speak in front of the class on a topic picked by our instructor. A classmate gave an impassioned speech on the benefits of drinking liquor. Alcohol, he insisted, warded off colds, kept you alert, and even made you steadier on your feet.
“Good job,” said our instructor when he finished. “Only one thing: Your topic was the benefits of drinking liquids, not liquor.”
• DAVID WILSON
At the beginning of my junior year at Russellville High School in Arkansas, our homeroom teacher had us fill out a form stating our future goals. Out of curiosity, I leaned over to see what my friend put down for her aspirations.
Where it read “Vocational Plans,” she had written, “Florida.”
• CRYSTAL BRUCE
When my sister was in high school, she went out with the captain of the chess team. My parents loved him ’cause they figured any guy who took three hours to make a move was okay.
• COMIC BRIAN KILEY
An e-mail from our school principal: “The Miss BHS Beauty Pageant has been moved to Friday night instead of Saturday because of the contestants involved in the hog show.”
• VASTER FRYAR
“Hurry up or we’ll be late!” shouts a teacher to her kindergarten class.
“What’s the rush?” a tot asks coolly.
“If we’re late, we’ll miss your next class!” the teacher reminds him.
The kid shrugs. “If you’re in such a hurry, go on without us.”
• SOURCE: FUNNY IN THAILAND SURVEY
Father: The fortune teller said my son would excel in school.
Friend: And did he?
Father: Yes. The size of his uniform is XL.
• RAJESHWARI SINGH
TEACHER’S PET
On the first day of Hebrew School the teacher finished the lessons and asked for questions.
“I’ve got one,” said a boy. “Accord
ing to the Bible, the Children of Israel crossed the Red Sea, right?”
“That’s right,” said the teacher.
“And the Children of Israel defeated the Philistines and the Egyptians and they built the temple, and they were always doing something important, right?”
“All of that is correct,” agreed the instructor. “So what’s the question?”
“Well,” demanded the boy. “What were the grownups doing?”
• CLARENCE KRAJENKE
“I did my homework but the dog pressed control-alt-delete.”
The new family in the neighborhood overslept and their six-year-old daughter missed her school bus. Though late for work, her father had to drive her to classes, following her directions.
The trip took 20 minutes around a number of turns, yet the school proved to be just a short distance from their home. Annoyed, the father asked his daughter why she had given such directions.
“That’s the only way I know, Daddy,” she explained. “That’s where the school bus goes.”
• JOHN MCGEORGE
I went to a really tough high school. In English class my teacher told us to make an outline, and someone asked, “Where’s the body?”
• JAY TRACHMAN
A boy comes home from school and asks his mother, “Ma, what’s sex?”
Frazzled, the mother stops what she’s doing and starts to explain, beginning with the little seed, talking about the birds and the bees and finally about man.
Slightly taken aback, the boy observes the extremely thorough lesson. There’s something solemn to the moment.
Once she is through, the mother asks, “Did you understand, honey?”
The answer came in a flash, “Yes, Mom. Except that all the stuff you told me is not going to fit in this little square . . .”
Only then did she notice that he held a form to be filled out with his name, age, sex . . .