The community college where my ex-husband teaches is next door to the North Carolina School for the Deaf. One day he entered the computer lab and noticed a hearing-impaired student signing away animatedly — but, it seemed, to no one in particular. He asked her interpreter if the student was okay. “Oh, she’s fine,” said the interpreter. “She’s just swearing at her computer.”
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My new credit card arrived in the mail with a large sticker on it, giving the phone number to activate the card. I called the number and got one option: ‘Press One’ to activate the credit card. That led me to a live person, who answered with her first name and the title “Credit Card Activator.”

As I got ready to give her the necessary information, she interrupted me, asking, “How can I help you?”
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One of my friends, a musician, is always upbeat. Nothing gets her down. But when she developed ringing in one ear, I was concerned it might overwhelm even her. When I asked if her condition was especially annoying to a musician, she shook her head. “Not really,” she said cheerfully. “The ringing sound is in the key of B flat, so I use it to tune my cello a half-tone lower.”
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Freelance newspaper writers don’t get nearly as much attention as writers with regular bylines. So I was delighted when I finally got some notice. It was at the bank, and I was depositing a stack of checks.

“Wow,” said the teller, reading off the names of publishers from the tops of the checks. “You must deliver a lot of papers.”
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It began as an innocent game with my toddler son, Robert. I’d get in the fighter’s stance and start shadowboxing. Jabbing with both fists, I’d say, “One-two, one-two,” and he would imitate me over and over. I never thought about the consequences of this little exercise until my wife took our son to a birthday party. When the boy’s mother was handing out noisemakers she leaned over to Robert and asked, “Would you like one too?” It took my wife a while to explain her way out of what happened next.
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An acquaintance of mine was hired as a research assistant by the physics department of a West Coast university to investigate the thermodynamic properties of wood. Two weeks after starting work he was approached by an encyclopedia salesman who explained that purchase of the encyclopedia entitled the buyer to have any three special questions answered completely. To save himself a great deal of work, the researcher bought the encyclopedia, stipulating for his first free question a full dissertation on the thermodynamic properties of wood.
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Tourists to the Channel Islands want to see nature and whales. But a few of their questions have revealed some uncertainty:

“What time does the 12 p.m. boat leave?”

“What trip do you recommend for a Girl Scout troop that doesn’t like nature?”

“I’d like to go out to see the whales on August 8. Are the whales going to be out that day?”

“What’s an island?”
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“Nice dog. What’s its name?” I asked my friend’s 10-year-old son.

“Bob,” he said.

“And your cat?”

“Bob.”

“How do you keep them straight?”

“Well one is Bob Cat and the other is Bob Barker,” the boy answered.

“Tell him your rabbit’s name,” his father suggested.

The kid smiled and said, “Dennis Hopper.”
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My good friend is more aggressive at work than she realizes. After she had her annual performance review, I asked, “How did it go?”

“They had written that I was overbearing,” she replied with a shrug. “I made them take it off.”
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The pastor decides to use one rich parishioner to set an example. “John,” he says, “you’re a successful businessman; surely you could contribute more to the building fund.”

John replies, “But my mother is in a nursing home, my daughter just lost her job, and my son is starting college … If I can say no to them, I can say no to you too.”
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My four-year-old son, Austin, and I spend a lot of time playing school. One of our favorite activities is working on a puzzle map of the United States. As we complete the map, I often quiz Austin on the names of the different states. On one particular day, I asked him what country he lived in. Proudly he declared, “The United States of America Online.”
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Bartenders and waiters have heard ‘em all. But what we rarely hear is someone turning down a drink. “Nah, I better not have one,” said one man after I offered him a glass of wine. “I have the world’s worst stomach. I eat so many antacids that if I were to keel over dead right this minute, I’d leave my own chalk outline.”
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Sounds of crashing and banging in the middle of the night sent me and my husband out to our garage. There we spotted three raccoons eating out of the cat dish. We shooed them away and went back to bed.

Later that week we were driving home and I noticed three fat raccoons ambling down the road. “Do you think those are the same ones we chased off?” I asked.

“Hard to tell,” said my husband. “They were wearing masks.”
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Ernest, my husband, was playing golf with our town’s fire chief when he hit a ball into the rough. As Ernest headed for the brush to find his ball, the chief warned, “Be careful, the rattlesnakes are out.” The chief explained that calls had been coming in all week requesting assistance with removing the snakes.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Ernest replied in astonishment. “People actually call you to help them with rattlesnakes? What do you say to them?”

“Well,” said the chief, “the first thing I ask is, ‘Is it on fire?’ ”
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A colleague was planning a trip to my business office and asked if I could find him a hotel with exercise facilities. I called several hotels, with no luck.

Finally I thought I had found one. I asked the receptionist if the hotel had a weight room.

“No,” she replied, “but we have a lobby and you can wait there.”
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My boss had his hands full running a funeral parlor and raising two rowdy preteen boys. Preparing for a funeral one day, he found the hearse plastered with police department stickers, courtesy of his sons. He frantically scraped the stickers off before his clients could read what they said: “Bring Them Back Alive.”
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If athletes get athlete’s foot, do astronauts get mistletoe?
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From this week’s church bulletin: “Coming up—Theological Open House. We discuss thought-provoking topics. Your opinions are hardly welcome.”
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When we moved cross country, my wife and I decided to drive both our cars. Nathan, our eight-year-old, worriedly asked, “How will we keep from getting separated?”

“We’ll drive slow so one car can follow the other,” I reassured him.

“Yeah, but what if we get separated?” he persisted.

“Then I guess we’ll never see each other again,” I quipped.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m riding with Mom.”
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I knew it was time to upgrade our computer when I finished spell-checking a document. I had typed in a word I was certain was spelled correctly, but the computer failed to recognize it, offering instead “entrant,” “interned” or “internee” as possible substitutions. The word in my document? “Internet.”
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As a promotional gimmick for my restaurant, I send out coupons offering people a free dinner on their birthdays. One day an anxious-sounding man called. “I got your card. How did you find me?”

“From a mailing list I purchased from a supplier,” I told him. “Why?”

“It used my real name, and I’m in the Witness Protection Program. What’s the name of the company?”

I didn’t want to say it, but I had to tell him the truth: Moving Targets.

Adapted from Readerdigest.com