B
efore I could enroll in my company’s medical insurance plan, I needed to fill out a questionnaire. As expected, the form was very thorough, leaving nothing to chance. One question asked, “Do you think you may need to go to the emergency room within the next three months?”
— HAIFENG JI
A
hot-air balloonist had drifted off course. He saw a man on the ground and yelled, “Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?”
“Yes,” the guy said. “You’re in a balloon.”
“You must work in I.T.,” the balloonist said.
“How did you know?”
“What you told me is technically correct but of no use to anyone.”
“And you must work in management,” the man on the ground retorted.
“Yup.”
“Figures. You don’t know where you are or where you’re going, but you expect me to help. And you’re in the same position you were in before we met, but now it’s my fault.”
— MICHAEL & EDITH MILLER
M
oving back to Austin, Texas, after 10 years, I was surprised at how much the city had grown. I asked my real estate agent about the commute. She said, “On Mondays, rush hour starts at 5. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, it starts around 4:30. On Thursdays, it starts at 4.”
“When does it begin on Fridays?” I asked.
“On Thursday.”
— KRISTIN HOLDGRAFER
I
n a recent poll one in four people said they’d donate a kidney to a complete stranger. Yeah, sure. Ninety percent won’t even let a stranger merge in traffic.
— JAY LENO THE TONIGHT SHOW (NBC)
H
is new hybrid car was my friend’s pride and joy. He was always bragging about it and boring his buddies to death.
As he was giving us a ride one day, he pontificated, “They should have a special lane for people who care about the environment.”
“They already do,” came a voice from the backseat. “It’s called a sidewalk.”
— JAMES SEWELL
T
hree contractors bid on a minor fence-repair job at the White House.
The first contractor, from Florida, comes in with a bid of $1,000: $400 for material, $400 for labor and $200 profit.
The second contractor, from Tennessee, says he’ll do the job for $800: $300 for material, $300 for labor, and $200 profit.
Then comes the contractor from New Jersey, who submits a bid of $100,800.
“Why so much?” asks the startled government official.
“Well,” says the contractor, “I figure, $50,000 for me, $50,000 for you, and $800 for the guy from Tennessee to fix the fence.”
A
s I wandered down an aisle of my local warehouse store, I overheard the man next to me talking on his cell phone.
“Now is just not a good time for me. I need to concentrate on this,” he said, exasperated. “I’ll call you back when I get to the car.”
— MARTHA STEVENS
N
ew York city straphangers were told over the subway PA to expect the expected: “Because of construction, this train will be making express stops. The MTA reminds all passengers that to better serve our customers, construction will be going on for the rest of your lives.”
— OVERHEARD IN NEW YORK
My husband placed a perfectly good set of used tires outside his garage with a sign that read “Free.” After a few weeks with no takers, he changed the sign to “$20.”
The next day they were stolen.
— JEANNIE CABIGTING
I
figured out how to cure the high divorce rate in this country. Have cell phone companies write the marriage contracts—you’ll never get out of them.
— BUZZ NUTLEY
I
just got a GPS for my car, and my first trip with it was to a drugstore. Since the manual said not to leave it in the car unattended, I brought it with me into the store. While there, the GPS came alive, and a voice stated, “Lost satellite contact.”
I wasn’t embarrassed until a woman turned to me and said, “Your ankle bracelet monitor is talking to you.”
— DAVID MCAFEE
N
ormal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.
— ELLEN GOODMAN IN THE BOSTON GLOBE
W
e got a registered letter from the city clerk saying we were in arrears on property taxes. I rushed to our town hall to settle the matter. It turned out we had paid our taxes a day late and there was a fine. “How much?” I asked the clerk.
She checked her computer. “Eight cents. Anything else?”
“Yes,” I said, counting out the pennies. “Just for the record, you spent 70 cents in postage to tell us this.”
— SARAH SAPORT
D
id you hear that General Motors is coming out with a new car? It’s called the Filibuster, and it’s supposed to run forever.
— BUZZ NUTLEY
O
ne day at a local café, a woman suddenly called out, “My daughter’s choking! She swallowed a nickel! Please, anyone, help!”
Immediately a man at a nearby table rushed up to her and said he was experienced in these situations. He calmly stepped over to the girl, then with no look of concern, wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. Out popped the nickel.
The man returned to his table as if nothing had happened.
“Thank you!” the mother cried. “Tell me, are you a doctor?”
“No,” the man replied. “I work for the IRS.”
— MIKE THOMAS
The opposite of talking isn’t listening.
The opposite of talking is waiting.
— FRAN LEBOWITZ
S
ince he runs a pawnshop, I decided to ask a friend of mine to appraise my grandfather’s violin. “Old fiddles aren’t worth much, I’m afraid,” he explained.
“What makes it a fiddle and not a violin?” I asked.
“If you’re buying it from me, it’s a violin. If I’m buying it from you, it’s a fiddle.”
— LARRY BICKEL
T
he plumber fixes a leak in the doctor’s house—then bills him for $1,000.
“This is ridiculous!” the doctor says. “I don’t even charge that much.”
The plumber says, “Neither did I when I was a doctor.”
— JEFFREY RAIFFE
“R
ead all about it!” yelled the newsboy, hawking his papers on the corner. “Fifty people swindled! Fifty people swindled!”
Curious, a businessman bought a paper. “Hey,” he said, “there’s nothing in here about 50 people being swindled.”
“Read all about it!” yelled the newsboy again. “Fifty-one people swindled!”
T
he deafening car alarm outside the supermarket got everyone’s attention. So by the time I entered the store, this announcement was coming over the PA system: “Would the owner of a silver PT Cruiser please return to the parking lot? Your car is crying.”
— BOB NEWTON
Well, at least there’s one good thing about high gas prices:
Whenever I fill the tank, I double the value of my car.
— ELIZABETH HAMILTON
S
o there I was, tearing my hair out trying to sign up for an online basketball pool. For my username, I offered terms like Hoops and Hangtime, only to be told, “That user ID is taken. Please select another.”
I realized I wasn’t the only frustrated one when I saw my last two entries were also taken: ForPetesSake and ThisIsInsane.
— GAIL WORKMAN
I
think Ford names trucks by how many times you cuss when you fill them up: F-150, F-250…
— BUZZ NUTLEY
A
s a stockbroker gets out of his BMW, a car slams into the door, shearing it off. When the police arrive, the stockbroker is apoplectic.
“See what that idiot did to my beautiful Bimmer?” he shouts. “Do you know what this car cost?”
“Sir,” says the officer, “you’re so worried about your car that you haven’t even noticed that your left arm was ripped off.”
The stockbroker takes a look at where his arm once was and screams, “Where’s my Rolex?”
M
y youngest son was in Montreal getting ready to leave for Australia. I spoke to him the night before he left and suggested he write me a letter once he was settled.
“You mean,” Todd said, “with a pen and paper?”
— JANET BINGLEY
S
cientists now say that people should not use their cell phones outdoors during thunderstorms because of the risk of being struck by lightning.
You should also avoid using them in movie theaters because of the risk of being strangled.
— BEN WALSH
O
ur town tends to be politically active, so as the editor of the local newspaper, I’m used to getting phone calls about all sorts of important issues. That includes this message left on my voice mail after a recent election: “Would you give me a call and explain to me what we were voting on? I’d like to see if I voted the way I wanted to.”
— MATT LUBICH
W
hen my friend phoned the IRS recently, he prefaced his comments by stating, “I’m calling with the stupid question of the day.”
The tired-sounding agent replied, “Too late.”
— CINDY MOORHEAD
What’s the difference between a pigeon and an investment banker?
The pigeon can still make a deposit on a BMW.
— PAUL STRAMBERG
I
was at a local festival and noticed a guy in bad circus makeup doing intricate balloon animals.
He was twisting something together when a little girl asked, “What are you making?”
He sighed, “Minimum wage.”
— EMILY SHULTZ
Funny Thing about Aging
F
or her 40th birthday, my wife said, “I’d love to be 10 again.” So that Saturday, we had a heaping stack of chocolate-chip pancakes, her favorite childhood breakfast. Then we hit the playground and a merry-go-round. We finished the day with a banana split.
“So how did you enjoy being a kid for a day?” I asked.
“Great,” she said. “But when I said I wanted to be 10 again, I meant my dress size.”
— SEBASTIAN E., ON CLASSIFIED GUYS
I
’m not keen on taking pills, so when my doctor gave me a prescription to lower my blood pressure, I asked him if there were any side effects.
“Yes,” he said. “Longevity.”
— BELLA KELLY
T
hough I often pride myself on appearing younger than my 59 years, I had a reality check when I brought my mother back to the nursing home after a visit with us. As I struggled with her suitcases, two elderly gentlemen held the door open for me.
“We hope you will be very happy here,” one of them said to me.
— MARION CLOUSE
I
was feeling pretty creaky after hearing the TV reporter say, “To contact me, go to my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, or try me the old-fashioned way—e-mail.”
— LEE EVANS
T
o celebrate my retirement, my wife and I dined with a friend we hadn’t seen in years. The next day he sent us an e-mail that included—I hope—an honest mistake: “How wonderful it was to see you both aging.”
— LAWRENCE DUNHAM
W
e had a satellite dish installed on our roof, and my 22-year-old son was trying to teach me how to operate the remote. Since I am not the most technologically savvy person, it was not going well.
After repeating the instructions for the umpteenth time, he sighed, “This would be a lot easier if you were 12.”
— PAULA MAHARREY
H
ere’s one way of making sure a sales promotion won’t bankrupt your business. A sign in a local barbershop read “We offer senior-citizen discounts. Must be at least 80 years old and accompanied by a parent.”
— ROBERT MCGRORY
N
ot long after my grandfather bought my grandmother a pair of powerful—and expensive—hearing aids, Grandma accidentally washed her hair with them in.
“Oh, great,” she said to me. “If your grandfather finds out that I damaged these hearing aids, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
— JERE SANDBERG
I
recently ran into the woman who used to clean our house and was surprised to hear that she was still at it despite her advanced age.
“How do you manage it?” I asked.
She explained her secret: “I just keep clients who can’t see the dirt any better than I can.”
— MALCOLM CAMPBELL
N
o generation gap between me and my younger college classmates, I thought. Wrong. When a teacher used the expression “broken record,” a young man next to me asked, “What’s that mean?”
“Endless repetition,” I explained. “If a record were scratched, the needle would skip and play the same piece of music over and over.”
His face brightened. “Like a corrupted MP3 file?”
— CHRISTINA LINDSEY
Teaching is not for sensitive souls. While reviewing future, past and present tenses with my ninth-grade English class, I posed the question, “ ‘I am beautiful’ is what tense?”
One student raised her hand. “Past tense.”
— REEMA RAHAT
A
couple are getting ready for bed after a long day’s work.
“I look in the mirror, and I see an old lady,” the woman says to her husband. “My face is all wrinkled, and I’m sagging and bagging all over. And look at this flab on my arms.”
Her husband is silent.
“Hey!” she says, turning to him. “Tell me something positive to make me feel better about myself.”
“Well,” he says, “your eyesight is still great.”
— JEFFREY RAIFFE
F
or my 75th birthday my son gave me a beautiful purse and filled it with 75 one-dollar bills. The next day I went shopping and pulled out my fat wad of singles.
The cashier’s eyes bugged out of her head. “Are you a cocktail waitress?” she asked.
“No,” I replied, counting out my money. “An exotic dancer.”
— HELEN KLEIN
How can you tell you’re getting old?
You go to an antiques auction and three people bid on you.
F
eeling listless, I bought some expensive “brain-stimulating” pills at the health-food store. But it wasn’t until I got home that I read the label.
“This is just rosemary extract,” I complained to my husband. “I can’t believe I spent all that money for something that I have growing like wild in the yard!”
“See?” he said. “You’re smarter already.”
— SUSANNE HIGBEE
The antiaging ad that I’d like to see is a baby covered in cream, saying,
“Ah! I’ve used too much!”
— COMIC ANDREW BIRD
A
nurse friend of mine took a 104-year-old patient for a walk in the hospital corridor. When she got him back to his room and sat him down, he took a deep breath and announced, “That was great! I don’t feel a day over 100!”
— MARY CIPOLLONE
M
y friend’s grandmother was in the hospital and was fading fast. When he visited her the next day, he was delighted to find her alert and on the mend. “You really gave us a scare,” he said. “We thought you were going to buy the farm.”
“I’m fine,” she r
eassured him. “I was just checking out the property.”
— RICK HOSMER
W
hen I checked into a motel, I noticed a card in our room indicating that guests 55 or older received a seniors’ discount. As a newly minted 55-year-old, I returned to the front desk armed with photo ID. Imagine my chagrin when the clerk told me he had already given me the discount!
— JACKIE GREENHALGH
M
y friend was looking at home-gym equipment with her husband. She stepped on a treadmill and said, “Honey, if you buy this for me, I will look like I did in high school.”
“Sweetheart,” he said gently, “it’s a treadmill, not a time machine.”
— LORETTA NISSEN
E
ven though she’s been teaching English for 25 years, my mother never felt her age was an issue, until the day she helped a student with a report on the Vietnam War. Mom recognized the name of a war correspondent mentioned in the textbook and blurted, “I used to go out with him!”
Peering up from his work, another wide-eyed student asked, “You dated someone from our history book?”
— SHANA GREEN
A neighborhood photography studio offered a special that few could resist. The sign read:
Now shooting seniors for free.
— LINDA CANTRELL
I
nspirational speaker Dr. Wayne Dyer still remembers the card his kids gave him for his 64th birthday. The front said, “Inside is a message from God.”
Laughter Really Is the Best Medicine: America's Funniest Jokes, Stories, and Cartoons Page 8