Divorce Fun

 

Now, what this fellow did, I’m not saying it was right, but it was funny. In these depressing times anything that gives us a laugh is great.

 

This fellow lives on the outskirts of Chicago. He is divorced and he hates his ex-wife! This is not unusual. Lots of divorced people hate their former spouses.

 

Now, if you ask a divorced man who was at fault, he’ll say “ hers”, and his ex-wife will say ‘his”. There is always a saint and a villain. In other words both parties LIE!

Now, this fellow wasn’t violent. To his credit, he showed more wisdom and imagination! When they were divorced, his wife went her way, while he remained at their old house.

 

One day a letter came for his ex-wife. He felt no compunction about opening the letter and reading it. As he read, a wicked smile crossed his face. The letter was sent from someone who went to his ex-wife’s high school. It was a questionnaire on what they were up to in the last 40 years. The form would be circulated to all the members of the graduating class.

 

This fellow answered the questionnaire himself, signing his ex-wife’s name and returned it, laughing all the way to the post box. It seemed by reading the form, by more than 200 classmates, his ex-wife had an exciting 40 years since high school!

 

The question on “ Job” was answered: Retired on 4th husband’s divorce settlement.

 

The answer to “ Greatest Accomplishment” was: My 4 divorces, each time I married better off.

 

The answer to “ Unusual Experience” was: Going to Indiana for my job and having an affair with two guys while my 3rd husband was back in Chicago working his butt off.

 

The form went on and on likening his ex-wife to a man-eating tart!

 

Well, needless to say, his wife read the questionnaire and realized who did the dirty deed. She called her lawyer and slapped a lawsuit on this fellow. She said she had a lot of mental problems because of this prank.

 

When the case comes to court, this fellow is praying the judge has a terrible ex-wife and takes pity on him.

 

The Moral: Leave your ex- spouse alone! Forget all about them!

Chicago Style Opportunity

I was talking to a chap in the corner tavern the other day. We were sitting on our high stools at the bar. We were talking to each other by looking at our reflections in the mirror behind the bar.So we didn’t have to turn our heads, it’s easier on the neck!

 

Well, anyway, he told me he knows an opportunity when he sees one. By the way he was buying me drinks from the money he earned from this opportunity.

 

I wish they would clean that mirror, I look like I didn’t shave!

 

Oh well, let’s get to his story. He happened to be walking along the path minding his own business, when a bus and a truck crashed. Nobody was going to the morgue, but about 15 passengers were injured.

 

So this chap went into ACTION! He wasn’t going to try to rescue anybody, the firemen were doing that. What he did was to sneak through the side door of the bus and slump on a seat and begin moaning as if in extreme pain.

 

He continued his charade all the way to the A&E, where they gave him pain pills. He went home, took a week off work and wondered how large his personal injury claim would be. It was $1000 just for being a little sneaky.

 

We both ordered another drink. When all of a sudden we heard a god-awful bang outside the tavern. A car and a bus collided! The whole tavern emptied out.

 

Everyone was either trying to get on the bus or some just laid down in front of the bus. It was quite a sight. It was my first time doing something like this.

 

We were all holding our necks or different parts of our bodies and moaning. We were all taken to the hospital. I was fitted with a neck brace! I ended up with $1500, just for a good piece of acting.

 

Is it worth the effort? Well, the chap I was with, said he’s on the way to financial independence!

 

Maybe I should continue “ writhing in agony” for compensation!

 

It’s all in a day’s work, Chicago style!

 

Does this happen in your town?

Why Are You So Happy?

Here is some “ scientific research”.

It has to do with why some humans are always grouchy while others are always bubbly and happy.

This question has always bothered me. Being a grouch myself, I wanted to know: Why? Why?, are there so many smiling faces?

So, a scientist kindly took a look at students and how they reacted to bad grades.

He found that the gloomy students blamed themselves for their terrible grades.

On the other hand, those who are happy and bubbly most of the time, usually blamed other things for their poor grades. Maybe the teachers were no good. Or something was on their mind, distracting them. It was never their fault!

So, the conclusion was that the gloomy group were right, they were at fault, themselves. They were realistic!

The “ happy” people were just kidding themselves. They were at fault, also, but they would not accept it. Someone or something else was to blame. They were unrealistic!

So, the cheerful people don’t really realise what’s going on. That’s why they are happy!

Someone said to me the other day; “ Cheer up, things have a way of turning out alright and get better in the end.”

I said: “ If that’s true, how come undertakers are so busy?”

Two presidents come to mind:

First, Abe Lincoln, he hardly ever had a smile on his face. That’s because Abe was well aware of what was going on and it was depressing.

Second, take Ronald Reagan, who was almost always smiling. He even admitted he didn’t always know what was going on!

So, here we have the gloomy president and all that was around as far as weapons go, was a short-range cannon.

And then, we have the happy president, who can’t stop laughing, and mankind has the means to destroy itself!

So, conclusion, people who smile a lot are not better than those of us who frown a lot!

Some people even go as far as to say, “ Smiling is unnatural”. While being grouchy and frowning is natural, since gravity tends to pull our faces and everything else downwards!

End of this “scientific research”!

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Recession, Depression!

Times are hard now, the politicians and bankers tell us. The cuts will bite deep!

I phoned my wife and said:

“Buy some coal.”

“ Why?”

Because I remember my father telling me during the Great Depression if you had some coal for the furnace, you were okay.”

“ But we have gas heat!”

“ Buy some coal anyway, the utility companies are heartless. And while you’re at it buy potatoes.”

“ Why?”

“ Because I remember my dad telling me they ate a lot of potatoes during the Depression. They’re cheap and they stick to your ribs. And switch off most of the lights in the house, one room, one light!”

When I got home, the house was dark, my wife was in bed, nothing else to do in these hard times.

I switched on the TV and heard an “expert” say times weren’t as bad as they appeared and there in no reason, yet, to commit suicide!

The commentator then said this could be the time to capitalize on some buying opportunities. So I headed for the financial district.

“ Excuse me, are you an upward mobile financial man?”

“ Yes.”

“ Can I ask you a question?”

“ Yes, but make it fast, I’m headed for the nearest bridge!”

“ Are you a broker or a trader?”

Yes, yes, but why are you asking these questions?”

“ Well, I was wondering what kind of wrist watch you’re wearing.”

“  A Rolex, of course, what kind of Broker-Trader do you think I am?”

“ Want to sell it?”

“ Yes, I won’t need it now.”

I gave him a few bucks and said:

“ Is that a Burberry trenchcoat you’re wearing?”

“ Yes.”

“ I’ll take it.” I gave him another couple of bucks.

“ Now, how about your car? Is it a Merc?’

“ Yes, it is, and I love it.”

“ I know how you feel, but at a time like this you need to relieve yourself of this drain on your cash.”

He gave me the keys and said:

“ It has a list price of…”

“ No, no, in these hard times the market is flooded with them.”

I put a couple of dollars in his hand and took the keys.

“ Is there anything else?” I said.

He looked at me with a far away look in his eyes.

“ Well yes, but it’s my prized possession.”

“ You can’t take it with you,” I reminded him.

“ What is it?”

“ It’s my Golf Club membership. I have my own locker!”

“ Give it to me and I’ll take you there one last time as my guest.”

The Broker-Trader stared at me in disbelief.

“ Nice doing business with you.”

“ Wait, take this,  you might as well have everything.”

He took out a metal container from his pocket.

“ What is it?”

“ My Coke.”

“ No thanks, I prefer Budweiser!”

THE WORLD IS A MADHOUSE!

Guns? To Own Or Not To Own?

Chicago is known for being the land of gangsters and guns. There are many lobbies for gun control.

Now, I don’t own a gun. But my friend said I could have used one when I got robbed last week. If I had been armed, I might have avoided losing my small change. But I wouldn’t have escaped the trauma, in fact it would have been more scary!

Well, I don’t know, maybe I would have been more aggressive with a gun.

I’m in the lobby of my apartment house. A man comes out of the shadows and shoves a gun in my face! I only have change in my pocket. I wonder will he be angry because I only have a couple of dollars in change?

Now, even if I owned a gun, it would probably be upstairs in the night table drawer next to my bed. I wouldn’t have it on me because it’s illegal to carry a concealed weapon.

Now, the gun being in a drawer in my bedroom makes it more convenient for me to suddenly wake up and shoot my wife or my foot! I probably wouldn’t get the intruder.

Now, getting back to the gunman in the lobby. I could appeal to his sense of fair play and say: “ Do you mind if I go upstairs and get my gun and we can settle this?” I don’t think the burglar would go for that suggestion.

But, lets say that I owned a gun and had it on me when I was accosted. The burglar would probably squeeze his trigger before I even got my gun out of my pocket. In which case, I lose!

Suppose I wait until he takes my change and flees. I could then draw my gun and drop him at 20 feet!

Now, this is not the movies. I would probably miss by a mile! He could turn around and put a hole through my forehead.

The odds are bad. First, I have to own a gun and have it on me. Second, I have to be a crack shot and hit a moving target at 20 or 30 feet.

My question is: With all the guns in Chicago, why do so few criminals get shot when they accost the public?

My friend replied, “ I don’t know. All I know is I’ve got a gun and I feel safer having it.”

“ OK, but where were you, my friend, and your gun, when I needed you?”

Loneliness in the Impersonal City

The old man sits alone in his room, mumbling to himself. The room has a stove, a sink, a toilet, a fridge, a single bed in the corner, one chair, and a bureau of drawers. The plaster is pealing and the one window has torn curtains. One picture of the countryside hangs crooked on the wall.

The city doesn’t care whether you live of die. Once every four weeks someone will check on you if you don’t pay the rent.The manager of this Chicago rooming house will come up and rap on the door.

“ Your rent is due!”

No answer!

They bust down the door and find that the occupant has been dead for a month!

The man keeps mumbling to himself. He is lonely, he doesn’t even have a dog. Dogs aren’t allowed in the rooming house. You don’t have a dog, you don’t have nothing, just a big zero!

The poor souls in this house are just looking to die. They’re waiting for doomsday. Which, of course, is on the cards for all of us. But a man’s gotta squeeze some good out of life, doesn’t he?

But, between the time he’s born and the time he dies, some never get that goodness. You’re nothing! Money is the king, today. That’s all that matters, if you’ve got the bucks.

Does anybody really give a damn? I saw a guy going 60 MPH down a side road and then he crashed into a parked car. The other car looked like and accordion!

The world is full of hypocrites. That’s why I gave up religion. I’ve seen  what’s going on, and how people act. I was an altar boy but now I firmly believe it’s all a big hoax. I’m not a firm atheist. I’m what you call agnostic. Someone who sits on the fence, not saying one way of the other!

Someone, the other day, asked me:

“ Do you see any hope?”

When a man gets up in years it’s not important what’s going to happen in 25 or 30 years. It’s the young people that have to worry about that.

When I talk to other old men in the park, they don’t care. They say, too bad, it’s terrible and then they go on their way. Because they aren’t going to change anything and even if things did change, they wouldn’t get any benefit from it!

I should have stayed in a smaller town. I think I would have been in a better situation now. In a big city it’s lonely and impersonal, no one knows you or cares.

The old man lights up a cigarette butt and gazes out of the dirty window.

On the street outside the rooming house, neon lights cut through the night.

Across the street there is a big sign:

“ The mayor is promoting “ URBAN OPPORTUNITY!”

My Ear Experience-A Tale I Must Tell

“ Hello? What did you say? Can you speak louder, please? Turn up the volume on the TV!”

I had been suffering with this plugged up right ear for 10 weeks, ever since I had the sore throat and flu. It seemed like phlegm got into my ear passage. When one of your senses goes wonky, you realize how you take it for granted. My whole life was being affected.

The first time I went to the GP, he gave me antibiotics and oil to put in my ear. I had been inhaling medicated steam without any results. The antibiotics and oil didn’t help.

The second time he gave me antihistamines. They didn’t help.

It was uncomfortable,  this plugged up ear, it made me heavy headed on one side. My hearing was muffled on the right side. When I talked, it was like talking in an echo chamber. I didn’t know how loud I was talking, until people started telling me.

I could hear things going on inside my head and body better than things in the outside world. For example, I could hear my jugular vein pulsating and if I was going to belch, I could hear the wind coming up from the deep recesses of my stomach through my tubes. It was weird!

The third time to the GP, he said I would have to see a specialist and he would put me on the NHS waiting list. I told him I would pay for the specialist, I wanted to get this over with!

I went to the private specialist with £50 on me, he took all of it.

Now, I was under the impression that the specialist would clear my ear right in his office. I had a similar condition with my ear years ago in the USA. Then the doctor blew out the phlegm from my ear with a bellows type instrument. I walked out, a half an hour later, hearing properly again! Quick and easy. But this time that was not to be. There were different techniques today.

The doctor examined me and said I would have to have a simple operation to remove the fluid from my middle ear. It involved a pin prick hole put into my ear drum and a grommet put in to act as a drain. I would have to have anaesthesia and this involved theatre time and an overnight stay in the hospital.

Well, you can imagine my disappointment and shock to find out that my simple blow out exercise had blown into a full scale theatre operation!

I was told if I wanted to go private, I could get it done in a couple of days, for about a £l,000. I couldn’t afford that. Put me on the waiting list.

So, it would be at least 7-8 weeks before my turn!

But, to my surprise, 2 weeks later, I got a letter telling me a bed was reserved at the General Hospital for me. I was to admit myself at 2 PM the following Monday. I believe I got in so fast because the specialist was on the staff of that hospital.

My wife and I went to the hospital and I got checked in. The nurse showed me to my bed. I was in the eye ward and it was mixed, men and women! I could hear my jugular vein pulsating away.

Looking at all the forlorn faces in the beds, it filled me with anxiety.

My next bed neighbour was in for a tonsillectomy. He was 29 years old. He was not happy. He hated hospitals. I ate a sandwich with a cup of coffee. That’s all I felt like.

I was reading and trying not to concentrate on the moans and groans around me. My wife came at 7PM for visiting and left at 8. I felt completely alone! I watched telly until 10 and decided to get into my night clothes and have an early night.

An old lady about 80, who had an eye op was kicking up a fuss. Her name was Gladys and she was delirious from the anaesthetic. She kept moaning, “ I want to go home.”

The nurse was trying to restrain her from getting out of bed.

“ No, Gladys, you can’t go home yet, you just had an operation.” Said the nurse, getting aggravated herself.

“ I want to go home,” repeats Gladys.

I thought it is going to be a long restless night, for me and for Gladys!

I think I awoke half asleep, I swear Gladys was standing by my bed smiling at me.Then, I dropped off to sleep again. Was it a nightmare?

Later on, someone startled me and put a sign above my bed that said, “ Nil By Mouth”. They took my water away. All of a sudden I was thirsty!

I got out of bed at 7AM. I couldn’t lay  there any longer. I put my robe on and sat in the big chair and began my morning wait.

I asked the nurse when my op will be. She told  me that my ear and the tonsils next to me, were last on the list for the morning. I would probably be  between 11 and 12 noon.

More waiting!

I sat looking at the op trolley come for different people, but not for me.

Finally, the nurse came and told me to get into my smock. Oh, the dreaded hospital smock, that lets in plenty of air and doesn’t leave you much dignity.

At 12:15 PM the trolley came for me. They covered me up and the nurse checked my name tag with her papers. I told her I was going for an ear op. I didn’t want a slip up, and get someone else’s op! The nurse said she knows what I’m going for. That was a great relief!

Watching the ceiling go by, They wheel me into the anaesthetic room. People were rushing around my body, attaching things to my chest that monitor the heart. The anaesthetist was talking to me.

“ Do I smoke?”

“ No, I gave it up,” I said.

He keeps talking, “ You’re American?”

“ Yes, from Chicago.”

My doctor was in the sea of faces looking at me. The anaesthetist injected by right arm and I was OUT!

The next thing I realised, someone was tickling the bottoms of my feet with a brush.

“ David, are you awake?”

“ Yes,” I whispered. I felt very heavy lidded and extremely euphoric. But, this feeling lasted only a few minutes.

On the way back to the ward, I started feeling very groggy and sickish. When we got back to the ward, I glanced at the clock, 1:20, a little over an hour. My wife was there, smiling at me, and helping the attendants to get me in bed. It was good to see her and to be back in the land of the living.

I had a sandwich and a banana right before I left the hospital at 6PM, on Tuesday. I had been in since 2PM the previous day.

The nurse came and cut my name tag off and said, “ I don’t want to see you back here tonight.” Probably because they would have to get another tag for me.

When I got home I threw up the sandwich and banana. It was Wednesday afternoon before I kept some solid food down.But at least I could hear properly again.

My doctor gave me a note saying not to go back to work until Monday. So, it was exactly one week from when I was admitted into the hospital. What an ordeal to correct a plugged up ear.

I hope I won’t take my health for granted again. Hospitals are wonderful when you need them, but hopefully I will never have to go back there again.

Incidentally, I don’t see Gladys in my dreams anymore!

The Only Personal Comparison

We all compare things. This is done to discover likenesses and differences that suit us. But what I am concerned with here, is the most important measurement for you. The only personal comparison you should make.

Now, one side of the coin says: Comparison with others is a waste of time, it takes away from your true self, and can be destructive to your character.

The other side of the coin says: The above is a negative way of looking at comparison. Comparing ourselves with others allows us to learn, develop our own ways of doing things, find out that what we want is different from others, and it inspires us to greater things. So, not all comparison is negative.

Then again, to be in a comparison game with others might be the wrong way to think about yourself. A better attitude is to think of being in competition with yourself. Let what you do today compete with and surpass what you did yesterday, and you will think well of yourself.

It takes self-confidence for people to determine for themselves how well they are doing, or what they want to do. When they don’t have this confidence, they use the only standards available—comparison with others. But when you see your progress grow to your own standards, you gain confidence.

But, maybe your standards aren’t high enough, they don’t push you hard enough. If you use some one else’s higher standards, it might push you more. Human nature pushes us to compare ourselves with others. It’s fun and a form of competition.

Remember, there is only one of you, and you take yourself where ever you go! No one is exactly like you, in terms of your inner feelings, thoughts and capabilities.

You perceive, think, and feel in your own unique way.

If you accept this notion, then you will want to take a hard look at why you should use anyone else’s example as a barometer for how well you do something. So, you want to compare today’s “you” with yesterday’s “you”, to see if you grew any as an individual.

Here’s something to ponder: Your self-worth can never be verified by others, so why compare yourself with others? You are worthy because you are growing by your own standards. If you depend on other people’s standards for your value, it is their worth NOT your worth.

There is a school of thought that you will be happier when you don’t use other people’s status as a measurement of your own happiness. Compare you, with you.

Here’s hoping you have many happy and fulfilling comparisons, and day by day you can get better and better.

***

What do you think? Which is the most compelling view?

Or, do we use a blend of both sides of the coin?