Fifty-Fifty
The editor of a small-town newspaper, furious over several bills that had just been passed, printed a scathing editorial with the enormous headline, “HALF THE LEGISLATORS ARE CROOKS.”
Many local politicians were outraged and exerted tremendous pressure on the editor to print a retraction. He finally gave in to their demands and ran his apology with the headline, “HALF THE LEGISLATORS ARE NOT CROOKS.”
The Paper
Student: “I don’t understand why my grade was so low. How did I do on my research paper?”
Teacher: “Actually, you didn’t turn in a research paper. You turned in a random assemblage of sentences. In fact, the sentences you apparently kidnapped in the dead of night and forced into this violent and arbitrary plan of yours clearly seemed to be placed on the pages against their will. Reading your paper was like watching unfamiliar, uncomfortable people interacting at a cocktail party that no one wanted to attend in the first place. You didn’t submit a research paper. You submitted a hostage situation.”
Honor Among Thieves
A mother complained to my wife, a schoolteacher, that other students were stealing her daughter’s pencils.
“It’s not the money—it’s the principle,” she insisted. “My husband took those pencils from work.”
Whatever Works
A woman noticed her husband sucking n his stomach as he was standing on the bathroom scales. Thinking he was trying to weigh less with this maneuver, she said to him, “I really don’t think that’s going to help.”
“Sure it does,” he replied. “It’s the only way I can see the numbers.”
Child’s Definition
“Give me a sentence about a public servant,” the teacher instructed her second-grade student.
“The fireman came down the ladder pregnant,” he answered.
“Umm…Do you know what pregnant means?”
“Yes,” said the boy. “It means carrying a child.”
Solutions
A month after Donald MacDonald started at Harvard, his mother called from Scotland. “And how are the American students, Donald?” she asked.
“They’re so noisy,” he complained. “One neighbor endlessly bangs his head against the wall, while another screams all night.”
“How do you put up with it?”
“I just ignore them and keep playing my bagpipes.”