In going to answer it, she tripped on a rug, grabbed for something to hold on to and seized the telephone table. It fell over with a crash, jarring thereceiver off the hook.

As it fell, it hit the family dog, which leaped up, howling and barking. The woman’s three-year-old son, startled by this noise, broke into loud screams. The woman mumbled some colorful words.

She finally managed to pick up the receiver and lift it to her ear, just in time to hear her husband’s voice on the other end say, “Nobody’s said hello yet, but it certainly sounds as if I have the right number.”

One day, I was in the bathroom and noticed one of the cabinet doors was ajar.  I read the box in the cabinet. I then asked my mother why she was keeping ‘napkins’ in the bathroom. Didn’t they belong in the kitchen?

Not wanting to burden me with unnecessary facts, she told me that those were for “special occasions” (her second mistake)…

Now, fast forward a few months…. It’s Thanksgiving Day, and my folks are leaving to pick up my uncle and his wife for dinner. Mom had assignments for all of us while they were gone. Mine was to set the table.

When they returned, my uncle came in first and immediately burst into laughter.

Next, in came his wife who gasped, then began giggling. Next, in came my father, who roared with laughter.

Then in came Mom, who almost died of embarrassment when she saw each place setting on the table with a “special occasion” napkin at each plate, with the fork carefully arranged on top. I had even tucked the little tail in so they didn’t hang off the edge!

My mother asked me why I used these and, of course, my response sent the other adults into further fits of laughter. “But, Mom, you SAID they were for special occasions!!!”

Stunned, the man leaves. Not knowing where to turn and having only $10 in his wallet, he decides to buy a 25 lb. flat of tomatoes at the supermarket. Within less than 2 hours, he sells all the tomatoes individually at 100% profit. Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up with almost $100 before going to sleep that night.

And thus it dawns on him that he could quite easily make a living selling tomatoes. Getting up early every day and going to bed late, he multiplies his profits quickly. After a short time he acquires a cart to transport several dozen boxes of tomatoes, only to have to trade it in again so that he can buy a pick-up truck to support his expanding business.

By the end of the second year, he is the owner of a fleet of pick-up trucks and manages a staff of a hundred former unemployed people, all selling tomatoes. Planning for the future of his wife and children, he decides to buy some life insurance. Consulting with an insurance adviser, he picks an insurance plan. At the end of the telephone conversation, the adviser asks him for his e-mail address in order to send the final documents electronically.

When the man replies that he has no e-mail, the adviser is stunned, “What, you don’t have e-mail? How on earth have you managed to amass such wealth without the Internet, e-mail and e-commerce? Just imagine where you would be now, if you had been connected to the internet from the very start!” After a moment of thought, the tomato millionaire replied, “Why, of course! I would be a floor cleaner at Microsoft!”

Moral of this story:

1. The Internet, e-mail and e-commerce do not need to rule your life.
2. If you don’t have e-mail, but work hard, you can still become a millionaire.
3. Seeing that you got this story via e-mail, you’re probably closer to becoming a janitor than you are to becoming a millionaire.
4. If you do have a computer and e-mail, you have already been taken to the cleaners by Microsoft.

A woman brought a very limp duck in to a veterinary’s office. As she laid her pet on the table, the vet pulled out his stethoscope and listened to the bird’s chest. After a moment or two, the vet shook his head sadly and said, “I’m so sorry, your duck, Cuddles, has passed away.”

The distressed owner wailed, “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m quite sure. The duck is dead,” he replied.

“How can you be so sure?” she protested. “I mean, you haven’t done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something.”

The vet rolled his eyes, turned around and left the room and returned a few moments later with a black Labrador Retriever. As the duck’s owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from top to bottom. He then looked at the vet with sad eyes and shook his head. The vet patted the dog and took it out, and returned a few moments later with a cat. The cat jumped up on the table and also sniffed delicately at the bird. The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly and strolled out of the room.

The vet looked at the woman and said, “I’m sorry, but as I said, this is most definitely, 100% certifiably, a dead duck.”

Then the vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys and produced a bill which he handed to the woman. The duck’s owner, still in shock, took
the bill.

“$325!”, she cried. “$325 just to tell me my duck is dead?”

The vet shrugged. “I’m sorry.” “If you’d taken my word for it, the bill would have been $45, but with the Lab Report and the Cat Scan, it’s now $325.”

One year at Thanksgiving, my mom went to my sister’s house for the traditional feast.

Knowing how gullible my sister is, my mom decided to play a trick.

She told my sister that she needed something from the store.

When my sister left, my mom took the turkey out of the oven, removed the stuffing, stuffed a Cornish hen, and inserted it into the turkey and re-stuffed the turkey.

She then placed the bird(S) back in the oven.

When it was time for dinner, my sister pulled the turkey out of the oven and proceeded to remove the stuffing.

When her serving spoon hit something, she reached in and pulled out the little bird.

With a look of total shock on her face, my mother exclaimed, “Patricia, you’ve cooked a pregnant bird!”

At the reality of this horrifying news, my sister started to cry.

It took the family two hours to convince her that turkeys lay eggs!

Yep………………SHE’S BLONDE!

Along with laughter from the other customers nearby, I heard a woman remark, “That’s what’s wrong with this country. Kids today don’t even know how to pray. Asking God for ice cream! Why, I never!”

Hearing this, my son burst into tears and asked me, “Did I do it wrong? Is God mad at me?” As I held him and assured him that he had done a terrific job and God was certainly not mad at him, an elderly gentleman approached the table. He winked at my son and said, “I happen to know that God thought that was a great prayer.”

“Really?” my son asked.

The man replied, “Cross my heart.”

Then in a theatrical whisper the gentleman added (indicating the woman whose remark had started this whole thing), “Too bad she never asks God for ice cream. A little ice cream is good for the soul sometimes.”

Naturally, I bought my kids ice cream at the end of the meal. My son stared at his for a moment and then did something I will remember the rest of my life.

He picked up his sundae and without a word walked over and placed it in front of the woman. With a big smile he told her, “Here, this is for you. Ice cream is good for the soul sometimes, and my soul is already good.”

There were several dozen 5-1/4-inch disks piled up on my desk. I was busily working my way through these when the new, young IT student came up to me and put some object right down in the middle of my desk.

“Guess what this is?” the student asked.

I like interesting gadgets so I picked it up to look at it. It’s a heavy 4-inch cube, apparently made of solid metal, with a large rod sticking out one side.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Tell me.”

“It’s a neodymium magnet. The world’s most powerful magnet,” student said. “It uses rare metals. Look, you can actually switch it on and off just by moving the rod, which combines the metals.”

Before I could say anything, the student moved the switch. The magnet stuck tight to the metal surface of the desk, which the student demonstrated by trying to pull it off the desk with both hands.

He finally got it loose. But by then I’m staring in horror. The monitor on my desk has turned all the colors of the rainbow due to him waving this big magnet about. I shouted at him to take it away from me!

But it was too late. Most of the old floppies were wiped or badly corrupted.

The student had never seen 5-1/4-inch floppies before, so he didn’t realize what they were. It took me a month to recover as much as possible with a disk editor.

I did have a laugh, though. The magnet had also wiped all of the magnetic strips on the student’s credit cards.