I love my sister-in-law, but sometimes I just have to tweak her nose, especially when she gives me a hard time about being single.
A couple of years ago I was visiting for my brother’s birthday, and S-I-L was talking about how she was able to get an employee discount at the jewelry store she worked. She looked at me and said “And if you ever find someone, that applies to family members, too”.
I just gave her a confused look and replied “Jewelry? I thought breakfast was more customary”.
And just a few months ago she asked “Why haven’t you found someone to settle down with?”
My answer: “I have higher standards than <brother>”.
First, a little background. We spent part of last summer working four-day weeks to reduce expenses and prevent further layoffs while we waited for more business to arrive.
So its a few months later, and two of my co-workers are discussing weight and diets. I’m on the other side of the cube wall, working away.
COWORKER 1: So my wife started a new diet
COWORKER 2: Why’d she do that? She looks OK.
COWORKER 1: You haven’t seen my wife naked, have you?
ME: Not since we started working 5 day weeks again.
In an auditorium classroom of psychology of sexual behavior:
Visiting sex therapist: “We find that it’s better to use positive, reinforcing language than negative language during sex. Instead of ‘don’t do that’ or ‘I don’t like it when you do this’ we encourage one to say ‘do this’ or ‘I really like it when you do this’ But what about a situation where your partner is unintentionally making you uncomfortable? Let’s say that they’re laying on your hair. Can anyone think of a positive, non-threatening thing to say to your partner?”
My group of friends and I used to hang out with a girl I will call Girl. Girl was, how shall I call it, ummm…very promiscuous as well as forthright and detailed when talking about her exploits. One day a bunch of us were sitting around talking about ancestry (my group of friends is very ethnically diverse). Anyways, Girl was mentioning that in addition to her German/Mexican background -
One of my friends was ranting about this girl we know who behaves really badly in public. She will do just about anything to get a guy. My friend was saying she couldn’t believe that guys would ever be interested in someone like that.
I said, “I know, ___ gets more action than a public toilet.”
My friend laughed so hard at that one, and still uses it to describe this particular girl.
I was in my manager’s office demoing some improvements I’d made to our company’s software. There was one thing that he’d never been able to figure out how to do but took me about 10 minutes to implement. So when he tries it, he puts on this huge grin, looks at me, and asks:
“Can you walk on water?”
My response? (wait for it)
“When it freezes.”
He had a good laugh, but too bad no one else was around to appreciate it.
I walked in on my ex and a girl in bed. Screaming and crying ensued. She left. Fast forward two days. I go into the convenience store she works at. Her boss and another co-worker are there. I said, “Hi, Wendy! I barely recognized you with your clothes on!” She cried. I laughed.
“When jaywalking remember this rule - there’s safety in number.”
And this is from my friend. We were going to a bookshop called Times, which used to have several branches around but many have since closed down.
Me: “Times haven’t been doing very well”
Friend: “Yeah, times are bad.”
And on the same day (how many word puns could one bear in one short day?), we were talking about watching Star Trek:Nemesis and the difficulty of getting friends together to watch it.
Me: “But we are all so busy nowadays.”
Friend: “Maybe we can watch on weekend.”
Me: “But you told me you are not free!”
Friend: “So is Nemsis”
Took me a while to figure that out.
And a favourite of mine…
Me: “I am going to the ATM machine to draw money. Can you pass me a pen and pencil?”
The rehearsal for a community theatre production was ending and everyone was preparing to leave. The director piped up, “Before you go, I want to see my light people.”
Moving my rotund self toward the exit I replied, “Guess that lets me out.”
Once I was browsing an antique store with my mother and sister. We came upon a box of plain wooden cylinders that were flanged at each end and drilled through lengthwise with a small hole. The price marked on the box was five or six dollars each.
“What the heck are these?” I asked, astonished at the price for some old pieces of wood.
“Spools.” my mother responded.
“Well,” said I, “I guess there’s no spool like an old spool.”
The company decided to have an all-hands meeting to discuss the new policies and definitions of sexual harrassment. As we’re filing in to take our seats, the head of HR sees me and she says, “Hello Tim, glad you could make it!” (as if we had a choice). I said, “Hey, I figured this would be a great place to meet chicks!”
At age 50 and as a supervisor who no longer did any actual technical work I decided to take a UCLA graduate level extension course in Electromagnetic Wave Theory. When a fishing buddy asked me why my answer just popped out without thinking.
When I first entered college, I was forced to take some silly freshman orientation class. It was, for all intents and purposes, a class designed to show the students how to take notes, study for tests and live with people of different “lifestyles”. (Baisically: here’s what you should have done in high school, but were too distracted by acne, breasts and chest hair to take note of.)
So, the Dean of Students pops in to chat about the lifestyles portion of the class and proceeds to go on about heterosexuals and homosexuals. He explains the difference in a positive, unjudgemental way, and then asks us how to define bisexuals.
Ahem…
“Sometimes you feel like a nut,” I suggested, “and sometimes you don’t?”
At a former job, my boss, Trish, and I had become good friends, to the point where we compared dating stories. One day, someone in the office offered to go pick up orders from the local pizza place for lunch. Trish perused the menu, and then, in front of me and two guys, said, “So the small pizza is eight inches. How big is that?”
I spun around in my desk chair, and said, “Trish! You know how big eight inches is!”
My wife and I are standing in line at the grocery store. She remembers something she wanted and goes to get it. When she returns, she asks “did you miss me?”. Without missing a beat, I answered (non-plussed) “yes, dear, but give me a moment to reload.” The expression on the face of the guy behind us was worth a million bucks!
Flashback to an intro Spanish class in high school. We were on our fourth teacher (the first left mid-way through the year to take care of his ill father, we had a grad student teach for three weeks, new teacher came in for two days before she left to tend to very sick child, grad student came back for another two weeks, new teacher came in with 12 weeks left in the year).
The new teacher had just recently graduated from college. Her perceived inexperience and attractiveness made the guys in the class feel at ease to play around with her. Before every quiz or exam some of them (including my cousin) would try to get her to give us easy bonus questions worth a load of points. It’d always be followed by “But [our first teacher] always did it!”
Well, new teacher had an accident where she rear-ended a pickup truck that stopped abrubtly. She was all right (just a bruised collar bone), but was gone the day before an exam. When she returns and has the exams ready to pass out, the same old routine starts.
Cousin and his friends: “Come on, [new teacher]! [Old teacher] always gave us bonus questions worth 10 points!”
New Teacher: “No! I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday!”
Me, in a very rare moment of wit: “Nope, but you sure crashed into it.”
The teacher didn’t hear me, but the people around me sure did. They had a good laugh about it, and the teacher never asked me to repeat what I said.
Basically in one of my social classes we had a debate over how an extra 1.5 billion should be split up within a country. Some took it seriously, I didn’t. When it was my turn to talk, I had come up with a plan on the spot (which I drew up on the whiteboard) to tow Venus to Earth with a giant cable and a shuttle then use nukes to collapse it into a star which we would use to increase the average winter temperature of the country from -15 C to 15,000 C. Of course, people had concerns, and I had replies.
Student: Won’t the ice caps melt and flood everyone?
<beat>
Me: No, for you see the boiling point of water is 100 C. So the water would all evaporate and it would just be a bit humid.
Me: This would benefit everyone, we get warmer and the melted ice caps give the world a source of fresh water.
Teacher: Won’t the fresh water mix in the sea and become salt water?
<beat>
Me: What’re you a scientist? Leave this to the experts please.
Teacher: You do realize that this is impossible right?
<beat>
Me: With that attitude it is.
