The youngest child of a large family ran into the classroom, totally out of breath. He handed the teacher a note which read: "Please excuse my son's tardiness. I forgot to wake him up and didn't find him until I made the beds."
So we were lying on our backs on the grass in the park next to our hamburger wrappers, my 14-year-old son and I, watching the clouds loiter overhead, when he asked me, "Dad, why are we here?"
And this is what I said: "I've thought a lot about it, son, and I don't think it's all that complicated. I think maybe we're here just to teach a kid how to bunt or eat sunflower seeds without using his hands. We're here to pound the steering wheel and scream as we listen to the game on the radio, 20 minutes after we pulled into the garage. We're here to look all over, give up, and then find the ball in the hole.”
"We're here to wear our favorite sweat-soaked Boston Red Sox cap, torn Slippery Rock sweatshirt, and the Converse sneakers we lettered in on a Saturday morning with nowhere we have to go and no one special we have to be. We're here to tie the perfect fly, make the perfect cast, catch absolutely nothing, and still call it a perfect morning. We're here to nail a yield sign with an apple core from half a block away. We're here to win the stuffed bear or go broke trying.”
"I don't think the meaning of life is gnashing our teeth over what comes after death but tasting all the tiny moments that come before it. We’re here to be there when our kid has three goals and an assist. And especially when he doesn’t. “I don’t think we’re here to make Sports Center. The really good stuff never does. Like finding ourselves with a free afternoon, a little red 327 fuel-injected 1962 Corvette convertible, and an unopened map of Vermont’s back roads.”
“None of us will find ourselves on our deathbeds saying, ‘I wish I’d spent more time on the Hibbings account.’ We’re going to say, ‘That scar? I got that scar stealing a home run from Consolidated Plumbers!’ “See, grown-ups spend so much time doggedly slaving toward the better car, the perfect house, the big day that will finally make them happy, when happy just walked by wearing a bicycle helmet two sizes too big for him. We’re not here to find a way to heaven. The way is heaven.
“Does that answer your question, son?”
And he said, “Not really, Dad.”
And I said, “No?”
He replied, "I was wondering why we are here when Mom told us to pick her up 40 minutes ago."
My wife has not spoken to me in three days. I think it has something to do with what happened on Sunday night when she thought she heard a noise downstairs.
She nudged me and whispered, "Wake up, wake up!"
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"There are burglars in the kitchen. I think they're eating the tuna casserole I made tonight."
A flight attendant on a United Air Lines cross-country flight nervously announced: about 30 minutes outbound from LA, "I don't know how this happened, but we have 103 passengers aboard and only 40 dinners."
When the passengers' muttering had died down, she continued, "Anyone who is kind enough to give up his meal so someone else can eat will receive free drinks for the length of the flight."
Her next announcement came an hour later. "If anyone wants to change his mind, we still have 29 dinners available!
A scientist has come up with proof of something students have known for years -- chemistry lectures are boring. In an article published in the current issue of Chemistry in Britain, a university chemistry lecturer introduced a guest lecturer to a class of 50 doctoral candidates.
Then, he and his colleagues studied variations in what he calls the HTFDR -- "head-to-floor distance reduction." After about an hour , the average HTFDR dropped from 135cm to 121cm, said the author of the study, who preferred to remain anonymous.
The HTFDR immediately bounced back to normal when the speaker uttered the magic words: "And in conclusion . . ."
A man called the auto club for emergency repairs. Hours went by without the arrival of the tow truck. As the truck finally arrived, the motorist feigned a smile and asked, "Did the man who was supposed to come leave a next of kin?"
My 84-year-old mother, Regina, was in the checkout line at the grocery store. The woman behind her in line pointed to a patch on my mother's shoulder, to treat her recent heart attack, and asked, "Is it working?"
My mother replied, "It seems to be."
"Does it stop you from smoking?" asked the woman.
"Oh! That's not a nicotine patch," my mother replied indignantly, "That's my birth-control patch!"
Slàinte,
Patch
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