Real Life Humor

During a period of upheaval at the company where I worked, a number of office relocations were occurring. Having assisted with various moves, I considered myself quite the expert. So when I saw two colleagues struggling to carry a heavy desk up a flight of stairs, I went over and advised them that the desk would be much lighter if they removed the drawers. They duly took out the drawers. Then they balanced them on top of the desk and continued up the stairs.

- Deborah Hitchin

My sister-in-law, a teacher, was pulled over for failing to come to a complete stop. The officer wrote out a ticket and handed it to her with some advice: "Drive safe." "Safely," she replied. "What?" the officer asked. "You've corrected my driving," she explained. "Allow me to correct your grammar."

- Therese Jelinski

After his marriage broke up, my manager became very philosophical. "I guess it was in our stars," he sighed. "What do you mean?" I asked. "Her astrological sign is the one for earth. Mine is the one for water. Together we made mud."

- Lori Phillips

Clearly I was not going to win the battle of bulge on my own so I decided to join a gym. "Before you start working out, we like to do a health assessment," explained the gym representative. "When you come in, wear loose fitting clothing." "If I had loose-fitting clothing, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

-Kelly Blackwell

Zilah, my favourite aunt, is 74 and, as she herself puts it, she's completely "together." However, I went to her house the other day and she appeared to be worried. After much insistence, she confessed, "Darling, I think I'm getting old. Yesterday I went to the movies and rode a cab home." "And what's wrong with that?" I inquired. "I completely forgot I'd driven my own car there!"

- José Cláudio Garcia

As I passed the receptionist at our local senior centre, I noticed that she was rummaging through the lost-and-found box with one hand while holding the telephone in the other. "I'm sorry," she eventually told the caller. "They're not here. If they turn up, we'll call you at once." "What were you looking for?" a colleague asked. "He wanted to know if anyone had turned in his teeth," she replied. "He needs them for lunch."

- Elsie Morris

News that her third child was going to be a girl thrilled my cousin, who already had two boys. "My husband wants to call her Sunny," she told me, "and I want to give her Anna as her middle name in memory of my mum." I thought they might want to reconsider their decision, since their birth announcement would herald the arrival of Sunny Anna Rainey.

- Carolyn Wallis

Our nine-year-old niece slept on the couch in our computer room during a recent visit. "Is Uncle Jim an idiot?" she asked her mother the next morning. "Why would you ask that?" her mother replied. "He has all these books: Idiot's Guide to Windows, Idiot's Guide to PowerPoint..."

- James Salt

My 11-year-old brother was making chocolate chip cookies for the first time when he asked my mother, "Why do I have to leave the room?" "What do you mean?" she asked. "Come and look at the recipe," he said. "It says right here, 'Leave room for spreading.'"

- Scott DeGieo

The plan: to build a garden walkway made up of dozens of wooden squares. I decided I'd slice railway ties into five-centimetre thick pieces for the sections. That's what I told the clerk at the lumber yard. "You got a power saw?" he asked. "No," I said. "Can't I just use my hand saw?" He nodded slowly. "You could. But I just have one question. How old do you want to be when you finish?"

- Judy Myers

Don't ever pay a surprise visit to a child in college. You might be the one getting the surprise. I learned this the hard way when I swung by my son's campus during a business trip. Locating what I thought was the building he lived in, I rang the doorbell. "Yeah?" a voice called from inside. "Does Dylan Housman live here?" "Yup," the voice answered. "Leave him on the front porch. We'll drag him in later."

- Jericho Housman