Living Long
My friend Ida was slowly recovering from a heart attack. “Doctor,” she pleaded with her cardiologist, “you must keep me alive for the next two years. I want to attend my first grandchild’s bar mitzvah.”
“We’ll try,” he replied compassionately.
In due course Ida gratefully attended the festive rite of passage.
Some time later she again spoke to her doctor. “My granddaughter is to be married in 18 months. Please help me to be able to attend her wedding.”
“We’ll do our best,” he replied.
And my friend happily attended her granddaughter’s wedding.
Ten years passed. Ida visited her cardiologist regularly and followed his instructions religiously. One morning she called him. “Doctor,” she began, “I’m feeling fine, but I have another request to ask of you: Remember how you saw me through to my grandson’s bar mitzvah?”
“Yes.”
“And later how you helped me attend my granddaughter’s wedding?”
“Yes.”
“Well, as you know I’ve just celebrated my 80th birthday. And I just bought myself a new mattress.”
“Yes?”
“It has a 20-year guarantee…”
The Night Shift
A man got a job as a night watchman at a factory. There had been a lot of thefts by the workers on the night shift, and so every morning when the night shift workers passed through his gate it was his job to check their bags and pockets to make sure that nothing was being stolen.
Things were going along very well the first night on the job until a man pushing a wheelbarrow of newspapers came through the gate. Aha, he thought, that man thinks he can cover up what he is stealing with that newspaper. So he removed the paper only to find nothing. Still he felt that the man was acting strangely, so he questioned him about the paper.
“I get a little extra money from newspapers I recycle, so I go into the lunchroom and pick up all the ones people have thrown away.” The guard let him pass, but decided to keep a close eye on him. The next night it was the same, and the night after that. Week after week it went on. The same guy would push the wheelbarrow of newspapers past the guard’s checkpoint. The guard would always check and find nothing.
Then one night, about a year later, the guard reported for work only to find a message had been left for him telling him to report to the supervisor. He walked into the supervisor’s office and before he could say a word, the boss said, “You’re fired!”
“Fired?” he asked in total surprise. “Why? What did I do?”
“It was your job to make sure that no one stole anything from this plant and you have failed. So you’re fired.”
“Wait a minute, what do you mean failed. Nobody ever stole anything from this place while I was on guard.”
“Oh, really,” the boss answered. “Then how do you account for the fact that there are 365 wheelbarrows missing?”
Aging
I was having trouble with the idea of turning 30 and was oversensitive to any signs of advancing age. When I found a prominent gray hair in my bangs, I pointed to my forehead.
“Have you seen this?” I indignantly asked my husband.
“What?” he asked. “The wrinkles?”
