A CrocTrixy

 

Wife: “No, I’m telling you, I’m right! He couldn’t eat the Trix because he was an adult rabbit, and Trix were only supposed to be for kids.”

Husband: “Well, I always thought it was just because he was a rabbit and not a person.”

[A period of silence — the wife looks down at her food.]

Husband: “What’s wrong?”

Wife: “I’m just really getting tired of you always being wrong.”

 

 

Exactly

 

The last thing my friend Christy was prepared for was an invitation to a costume party. Eight and a half months pregnant, she was in no shape for any conventional costume.

Still, she wanted to go, so she painted a big yellow circle on an extra-extra-large white T-shirt, dug a pair of red devil horns out of her kids’ Halloween junk pile…and went as a deviled egg.

 

 

 

Turn the Light On

 

I live in Texas. I have two friends that are blonde and sisters. One day, they approached me and asked where the lighthouses were.

When I tried to probe a little bit, I was told, “Yeah, they’re good paying jobs and have lots of ads in the paper, but we don’t know where the lighthouses are to apply.”

I told them, “There are no lighthouses in Texas. Let me see that newspaper.”

Sure enough, there were ads for… “Light Housekeeping needed. Apply in person.”

Q: Why was Cinderella so bad at baseball?

A: She had a pumpkin for a coach.

Q: What are the rules in zebra baseball?

A: Three stripes and you’re out.

 

 

Q: How do hair stylists speed up their job?

A: They take short cuts!

 

Q: Why did the projector blush?

A: It saw the filmstrip.

Q: How do sailors get their clothes clean?

A: They throw them overboard and they wash ashore.

 

You Ain’t Lie-in

 

A hungry lion came across two men. One was sitting under a tree and reading a book; the other was typing away on his typewriter. The lion pounced on the man reading the book and devoured him.

Even the king of the jungle knows that readers digest and writers cramp.

 

*– Money, Honey –*
A couple was having a discussion about family finances. Finally the husband exploded, “If it weren’t for my money, the house wouldn’t be here!” The wife replied, “My dear, if it weren’t for your money I wouldn’t be here.”

 

In-Titled

 

A New Orleans lawyer sought an FHA loan for a client. He was told the loan would be granted if he could prove satisfactory title to a parcel of property being offered as collateral. The title to the property dated back to 1803, which took the lawyer three months to track down.

After sending the information to the FHA, he received the following reply (actual letter):

“Upon review of your letter adjoining your client’s loan application, we note that the request is supported by an Abstract of Title. While we compliment the able manner in which you have prepared and presented the application, we must point out that you have only cleared title to the proposed collateral back to 1803. Before final approval can be accorded, it will be necessary to clear the title back to its origin.”

Annoyed, the lawyer responded as follows (actual letter):

“Your letter regarding title in Case No. 189156 has been received. I note that you wish to have title extended further than the 194 years covered by the present application. I was unaware that any educated person in this country, particularly those working in the property area, would not know that Louisiana was purchased by the U. S. from France in 1803, the year of origin identified in our application. For the edification of uninformed FHA bureaucrats, the title to the land prior to U. S. ownership was obtained from France, which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain. The land came into possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the then reigning monarch, Isabella. The good queen, being a pious woman and careful about titles, almost as much as the FHA, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels to fund Columbus’ expedition. Now the Pope, as I’m sure you know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And God, it is commonly accepted, created this world. Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that He also made that part of the world called Louisiana. He, therefore, would be the owner of origin. I hope … you find His original claim to be satisfactory.

Now, may we have our … loan?”

They got it.

 

 

Floored

 

Having her hair done at a West Hempstead, NY, beauty parlor, a woman told a cautionary tale about racial prejudice. The story deserves a wider audience.

On a recent weekend in Atlantic City, the woman related, she won a bucketful of quarters at a slot machine. She took a break from the slots for dinner with her husband in the hotel dining room. But first she would stash the quarters in her room. I’ll be right back and we’ll go to eat,” she told her husband and she carried the coin-laden bucket to the elevator. As she was about to walk into the elevator she noticed two men already aboard. Both were black. One of them was big… Very big… An intimidating figure.

The woman froze. Her first thought was: These two are going to rob me.

Her next thought was: Don’t be a bigot, they look like perfectly nice gentlemen, even if one of them is awfully black. But racial stereotypes are powerful, and fear immobilized her.

She stood and stared at the two men. She felt anxious, flustered, ashamed. She hoped they didn’t read her mind but knew they surely did; her hesitation about joining them on the elevator was all too obvious. Her face burned. She couldn’t just stand there, so with a mighty effort of will she picked up one foot and stepped forward and followed with the other foot and was on the elevator. Avoiding eye contact, she turned around stiffly and faced the elevator doors as they closed. A second passed, and then another second, and then another. The elevator didn’t move. Panic consumed her. My God, she thought, I’m trapped and about to be robbed!

Her heart plummeted. Perspiration poured from every pore. Then one of the men said, “Hit the floor.”

Instinct told her: Do what they tell you. The bucket of quarters flew upwards as she threw out her arms and collapsed on the elevator carpet.

A shower of coins rained down on her. Take my money and spare me, she prayed. More seconds passed. She heard one of the men say politely, “Ma’am, if you’ll just tell us what floor you’re going to, we’ll push the button.” The one who said it had a little trouble getting the words out. He was trying mightily to hold in a belly laugh. She lifted her head and looked up at the two men.

They reached down to help her up. Confused, she struggled to her feet.

“When I told my man here to hit the floor,” one of the men, the average sized one, told her, “I meant that he should hit the elevator button for our floor. I didn’t mean for you to hit the floor, ma’am. He spoke genially.

He bit his lip. It was obvious he was having a hard time not laughing.

She thought: My God, what a spectacle I’ve made of myself. She was too humiliated to speak. She wanted to blurt out an apology, but words failed her. How do you apologize to two perfectly respectable gentlemen for behaving as though they were robbing you? She didn’t know. The 3 of them gathered up the strewn quarters and refilled her bucket. When the elevator arrived at her floor they insisted on walking her to her room.

She seemed a little unsteady on her feet, and they were afraid she might not make it down the corridor. At her door they bid her good evening. As she slipped into her room she could hear them laughing while they walked back to the elevator.

The woman brushed herself off. She pulled herself together and went downstairs for dinner with her husband.

The next morning flowers were delivered to her room ~ a dozen roses. Attached to each rose was a crisp one hundred dollar bill. A card said: “Thanks for the best laugh we’ve had in years.” It was signed,

Eddie Murphy and Bodyguard.

Dinosaur on the Dupage

 

The Dupage River flowed through the small town of Naperville, Illinois, (it was a small town in 1966) and for an 11 year old adventuresome soon to be Banana Pants it held all sorts of treasures. There seemed to be an endless supply of crawdads just ripe for the picking. Crawdad catching requires a swift finger dive carefully between your index finger and thumb, right behind the pitchers or you will pay dearly for wrong placement. Ya gotta be quick for it would seem the crawdads had an anti boy strategy one quick step to the side and latch onto the attacking fingers with the toothiest part of your pinchers at what seemed like 4ooolbs per square inch…YAAAOUCH that hurts, but that seemed to make the hunt that much more adventurous to me.

 

Then there were the frogs and the snakes. Oh how I loved to get a glimpse of a snake then dart after it. Snakes make a particular scratchy sound as they wind through the grass, (I can still hear it now) follow that sound and you will soon be on your prey, again you gotta be quick and accurate because if you pick them up too far behind the head they are coming around to get you and even the garter snakes will latch on for all they’re worth. Garters in particular have another defense, my, my they release a stink, sort of a cross between a skunk and gym socks, I would suppose it would deter me from ever eating one. None the less one snake capture was worth five or six craw dads or fifteen to twenty bull frogs which posed no possible bodily threat. The frogs just taught you to be quick and accurate.

Crawdads are one thing snakes another but my oh my, what would it mean to catch a dinosaur. A “Dinosaur”? Yes, from all the appearances of that tail sticking out of the mud I was convinced it was a baby stegosaurus. It had those sharp plates coming down it just like those pictured in the book my mom used to read to me The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek by Evelyn Sibley Lampman. Reasoning there was not much difference between Cricket Creek and the Dupage river I quickly informed our gang that we were now in the presence of a baby dinosaur and all we needed to do was pull it from its muddy hiding place. Not knowing what to expect in the encounter we armed the gang with big sticks as I attempted to capture the baby stegosaurus.

I grabbed hold of that tail and started to pull for all I was worth, the reptilian tug of war had started harshly and it became immediately obvious that this dinosaur considered this a life or death struggle, one inch forward three or four back. Man this baby dino had some power to him and the battle raged for about five minutes finally slowly I dragged enough out of the mud to see that the spikes on its back were attached to a shell of some kind.  That’s strange I reasoned maybe the baby stegosauruses keep a shell till they are bigger.

Then came the head and this thing looked mean as the devil one of the gang poked his stick toward his head and SNAP! He snapped off about a 2inch diameter stick like it was nothing. I started dragging backwards and every time that devil would try to come around on me I would drag him back for all I was worth. Once he completely cleared the mud it was obvious this was no dinosaur it was one huge snapping turtle. It was also very clear that he was none too happy about being drug from his mud hole. While some of the gang kept him at bay with the sticks and I had a hold of his tail we sent a detachment to retrieve some kind of container to take him home in.

Shortly they returned with a huge box from a grocery that backed up to the river. It was Saturday and my dad was home, surely he would marvel this giant reptile captured by his son and friends.  We laid the box on it’s side pulled the Turtle into the box and then with several keeping him at bay with sticks we flipped the box up and we now had the worlds meanest box turtle. Off we went with our trophy of boy bravery.

I’m not sure which shocked me more: that this wasn’t a stegosaurus or my dad’s horror when he peered into that box. “Are you boys out of your minds, that think could bite your leg off!!!! Take him back to the river this very moment and be very careful or someone’s going to get hurt badly, and Bruce then you come straight home and I will deal with you then. Our capture just didn’t get the admiration I thought it would for sure.

 

Dejected and depressed we headed for the Dupage River, then it occurred to me that the bridge was closer and it would be a lot more fun to drop him from the bridge then to just put him back in the mud. After all the bridge wasn’t all that high off the water, he might even skip a little like a stone. Amazing how creative young minds work and our depression quickly disappeared at the thought of the snapper splash down. Can you even imagine our excitement as we observed way off in the distance an approaching canoe?

 

“Alright, here’s the plan if we drop him from the back side of the bridge the approaching canoe will never see us. I’ll hold him by the tail until just the right moment, and then bombs away, I’ll drop him right in the middle of the canoe. This will be a moment we will always remember.”  My instructions still loom in my mind as I can’t help but wonder, “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!!!!”

 

Somewhere down the Dupage river,( I will never know this side of heaven because we ran like the little delinquents we were), a nice young couple having leapt from their canoe upon the sudden slamming of a giant snapping turtle into their tranquil afternoon voyage, must have either abandon their turtle pirated canoe forever, or somehow attempted to separate our shy stegosaurus from his new command as captain of the USS Shell Shocked..