"My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to...its office holders.” Mark Twain Good Morning ya'all. Before beginning this week, let's give a HUGE Shout-out to daughter Jenny, the elder and Sven, the betrothed. These fine young people have birthdays this week – one on the 22nd and the other on the 26th.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENNY and SVEN
Here we are Christmas Eve Eve Day or something along that line. All the presents are wrapped for this year. I truly hope all of you have a Very MERRY CHRISTMAS. It goes without saying that I hope Santa is good to you. Do you re-gift at all? Perhaps that is one of our little secrets. Don't tell anyone but I am afraid that next year I will have to purchase some gifts. I have virtually exhausted my stash of re-giftables. I may get out of that business anyway. It is exhausting. I have to keep track when I received the gift, who it was from and what the occasion was. Oh sure, I use an excel spreadsheet but still it takes time. I have imposed an arbitrary 3 year waiting period before I re-gift an item. I am extremely careful with who I give it to and when. I learned my lesson early on when I didn't pay that much attention. I decided to re-gift a very nice blender. It had been in my inventory for some time. I gave it to my daughter number 2, Debby, the younger, thinking that I had received it from my current wife. I knew she wouldn't remember it. It was for Debby's birthday. OMG! We are sitting at the Red Robin. There were six of us I think. Upon completion of our meal, she opened the gifts. She always leaves mine to the last because it is usually a really good one. She rips into the wrapping. She has one of those delightful anticipatory glows on her face. Opened her expression changed to “what the hell”. The rosy color in her cheeks brightened to a red hot red. Her eyes had a hardened glaze over them and they were pointed my way. She asked in a bearably controlled voice, “Is this a joke?” I quickly assured her it was not a joke. Had my mouth only paused for a moment while my mind had finished analyzing her face I may have been okay with an appropriate response. As it was my response unleashed a torrent of venom. I tried to explain but there is was no way out. I have not lived that down to this day. The unfortunate repercussion was that there is now this cloud hanging over all of our gift exchanges. People are wondering “Did he do it again?”
I had an early Christmas lunch with a friend of mine last week. This is an annual thing we do to catch each other up on things happening with our families. Bob related a story that he swears is true. This apparently happened a couple of years earlier. Here is his story as told to me. I called home one afternoon to see what my wife was making for dinner. "Hello?" said a little girl's voice. "Hi, honey, it's Daddy," I said. "Is mommy near the phone?" "No, Daddy. She's upstairs in the bedroom with uncle Frank." After a brief pause, I said, "But you don't have an uncle Frank, honey!" "Yes I do. He's upstairs in the bedroom with Mommy!" "Okay, then. Here's what I want you to do. Put down the phone, run upstairs, knock on the bedroom door and shout in to Mommy and Uncle Frank that my car just pulled up outside the house." "Okay, Daddy!" A few minutes later, the little girl came back to the phone. "Well, I did what you said, Daddy." "And what happened?" "Well, Mommy jumped out of bed with no clothes on and ran around screaming, then she tripped over the rug and went out the front window and now she's all dead." "Oh my god! What about Uncle Frank?" "He jumped out of bed with no clothes on too and he was all scared and he jumped out the back window into the swimming pool, but he must have forgot that you took out all the water last week to clean it, so he hit the bottom of the swimming pool, and now he's dead too." There was a long pause, then I said, "Swimming pool? Is this 555-7039?" At least my re-gifting goof up didn't kill anyone.
At the next table to Bob and I were two elderly gentlemen, Sam and Harry having their breakfast. Sam said to Harry, "Harry, why do you have a suppository in your ear?" Harry took the suppository out, looked it over and said, "Sam, I'm really glad you saw this thing, now I think I know where my hearing aid is."
My current wife, Sue, rushed into the Hy-Vee supermarket to pick up a few items. She headed for the express line where the clerk was talking on the phone with his back turned to her. "Excuse me," she said, "I'm in a hurry. Could you check me out, please?" The clerk turned, stared at her for a second, looked her up and down, smiled and said, "Not bad." That is what she told me anyway.
A little old lady was walking down the street dragging two large plastic garbage bags behind her onto the sidewalk. Noticing this, a policeman stopped her and said, "Ma'am, there are $20 bills falling out of that bag." "Oh, really? Darn it!" said the little old lady. "I'd better go back and see if I can find them. Thanks for telling me, officer." "Well, now, not so fast," said the cop. "Where did you get all that money? You didn't steal it, did you?" "Oh, no, no", said the old lady. "You see, my backyard is next to a golf course. A lot of golfers come and pee through a knothole in my fence, right into my flower garden. It used to really tick me off... Kills the flowers, you know. Then I thought, 'Why not make the best of it? So now, I stand behind the fence by the knothole, real quiet, with my hedge clippers and every time some guy sticks his thing through my fence, I grab hold of it and say, 'OK, buddy! Give me $20 or off it comes.'" "That seems only fair," said the cop, laughing. "OK. Good luck! Oh, by the way, what's in the other bag?" "Not everybody pays."
A flight attendant was stationed at the departure gate to check tickets. As a man approached, she extended her hand for the ticket and he opened his trench coat and flashed her. Without missing a beat she said, "Sir, I asked to see your ticket, not your stub."
Last but hardly the least, an accountant is having a hard time sleeping and goes to see his doctor. "Doctor, I just can't get to sleep at night." The Doctor replied "Have you tried counting sheep?" The accountant stated "That's the problem – I make a mistake and then spend three hours trying to find it." Now this is something I can relate to.
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE; AND TO EVERYONE – GOOD NIGHT!
There is no need to thank me for this valuable information: I'm doing it as a public service. Now, until we meet again. -TA!
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