Short Stories

Though skeptical of his teenage son’s new found determination to build bulging muscles, one father followed his teenager to the store’s weight-lifting department, where they admired a set of weights. “Please, Dad,” pleaded the teen, “I promise I’ll use them every day.” “I don’t know, Michael. It’s really a commitment […]

I heard of a recruiter for jump school, the name given for military parachute training, who explains the training this way: “Jump school is three weeks long. The first week they separate the men from the boys.” (Presumably, they also separate the women from the girls.) He goes on to

The story is told about three accountants who doubted their three engineer friends. They were traveling by train to a conference. The accountants bought three tickets, but the engineers only bought one. “How are three people going to travel on only one ticket?” an accountant asked. “Watch and you’ll see,”

“You’re having problems? No problem.” That’s what I try to tell myself when I begin to feel overwhelmed. And then I remind myself that the only people I am aware of who don’t have troubles are gathered in peaceful, little neighborhoods. There is never a care, never a moment of

Sam, an old man, was a witness in a burglary case. The defense lawyer asked Sam, “Did you see my client commit this burglary?” “Yes,” said Sam , “I saw him plainly take the goods.” The lawyer asked Sam again, “Sam, this happened at night. Are you sure you saw

A few years ago I had managed to screw up my life so badly that I found myself without a home and without hope. I’m ashamed to admit it, but even then I was so absorbed by my own self-pity that all I could think of was begging enough money

“Then the peoples around them set out to discourage the people of Judah and make them afraid to go on building.” (Ezra 4:4) An old story says that the Devil once held a sale of all the tools of his trade. Everything was displayed—keen-edged daggers of jealousy, sledge-hammers of anger,

“Home on the Range” is a familiar American song that has become something of an unofficial anthem of the American west. Words to the song are adapted from Brewster Higley’s original poem: “Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam, Where the deer and the antelope play, Where seldom is heard

In 1992, there was a high-school teacher outside of Chicago who found an unusual way to punish students when they did something wrong. They had to stay after school for detention, but not just your normal detention. That didn’t seem to have much effect. No, the guilty students were being