Stretch of the Imagination

A few years ago, when my sister was dating a guy who was 6'6", we decided to have a tall joke contest. These were my submissions.

He is so tall that . . .

17. When you talk to him, there's a two-second delay.

16. If you want to hug him, you have to hire a sherpa.

15. His first toy was the world's largest ball of twine.

14. He had to upgrade to Verizon's stratosphere plan.

13. For show and tell he brought Babe the Blue Ox.

12. When he failed his driver's test, he blamed cloud interference.

11. He instructs his barber to "just trim it to 40,000 feet."

10. When he pees in Grand Forks, they start filling sandbags.

9. He's the only person to join the Mile High Club without a plane.

8. When he wants to change the channel, he just taps the satellite.

7. His parents had to record his growth chart on the Washington Monument.

6. He was the only kid in Little League to catch a comet in right field.

5. When he says he sees dead people, you know they're in heaven.

4. When he moons someone, the tides change.

3. Birds worry about him pooping on them.

2. He had to take the Statue of Liberty to the prom.

1. Other kids had lice . . . he had aliens.

You Quack Me Up

The other night I was texting back and forth with a friend, trying to decide where we were going to eat before seeing a movie. There were several minutes' lag time between messages, since she was also trying to coordinate with her husband. By the time she finally proposed a restaurant, I checked the clock and told her we might be cutting it too close to make the show. Her reply:

Okay that's good. Sorry ... can't get our dicks in a row fast enough.

I think I read it twice before busting out laughing, which I was then doing so hard that I couldn't get a text back to her before she realized what she'd written. The next message:

And wow, I meant ducks!!

Auto-complete epic fail.

Lack of Love in an Elevator

I was recently on the elevator heading to work along with three other people. A bubbly young woman was chatting with a man who was obviously a coworker, and another woman was standing behind me. Bubbles, as we'll call her, since she was FAR too energetic for a Monday morning, started talking about her daughter.

Bubbles:  "Oh, my baby's never going to leave me. She's going to live with us forever."

Me: How old is this kid?

Bubbles:  "Have I shown you the double pacifier picture?"

Me: Oh, crap. It's an actual baby.

At this point, Bubbles whips out her cellphone, and I make a concerted effort to avoid looking in her direction. She shows the picture to her coworker, who offers an appropriate adoring response, and then shows it to the woman behind me.

Meanwhile, I'm watching the floors tick by and hoping against hope that I stay off her radar. No such luck.

"Here," she says, literally shoving the phone in my face.  "I think you're missing out."

Parents, we know you think your kids are precious. And, most of the time, we're willing to give you the obligatory oohs and ahhs that are somehow your reward for procreating. Hell, we even lie and say your offspring are the most adorable things we've ever seen, even if they look like scrunchy little aliens.

But here's a general guideline: No matter how proud you are, do not force pictures of your child on complete strangers and demand validation. Especially if they've shown absolutely no interest, and especially if they appear tired and/or generally surly.

What bothered me more than Bubbles' audacity (besides the invasion of my personal space) was that she gave no thought to why I might not be ogling her kid. Maybe I'd just lost a baby. Maybe I was having trouble getting pregnant. Whatever the reason, I wasn't interested. But she insisted.

So, when she said, "I think you're missing out," I wanted to reply, "Nope, I don't think I am." 

What I actually said was, "Cute." But I said it through gritted teeth and without smiling, and my lack of enthusiasm seemed to deflate her a bit, which was highly satisfying.

In any case, I managed to get my point across without explicitly telling her where she could shove her phone next. Because hey, I'm a bit of a grouch before 9 a.m., but I'm not a monster.

Tiny and Tipsy

My sister, mom, and I once found ourselves discussing the best possible title for a television show about a drunk and a midget who fight crime.

Hey, it could work.

After a couple minutes, I suggested "Shorty and the Barfly."  I thought this was a pretty good off-the-cuff idea ... until my mom topped me in the very next second.

Without missing a beat, she said, "How about Shrimp Cocktail?"

Hollywood, here we come!

Babblin' Crude

Best bus quote of the day, from a guy talking to someone very loudly on his phone about hooking a friend up with a job on an oil rig:

"Well, hopefully he'd be willing to give up the pot. I mean, I like to smoke a little weed, too, but for eighty grand a year with no education and a bad criminal record? That's a blessing. I gotta go. I got anger management today."

Now That's Love

A certain friend of mine tends to have hilarious conversations with her husband about ridiculous hypothetical situations. For example, after making the bed recently, one of them commented that leaving a pillow underneath the covers made it look like someone was still sleeping in it. They then imagined how horrified they would be if someone wasn't just sleeping there, but had actually died. After discussing it further, the scenario eventually evolved into this conversation.

WIFE:  "What would you do if we came home and found a dead hobo in our bed?"

HUSBAND:  [thinks for a minute] "Well, first of all, I'd never let you see it."

WIFE:  "How would you keep me out of the bedroom?"

HUSBAND:  "I'd send you to the grocery store. I'd say we needed eggs."

WIFE:  "And what would you do while I was gone?"

HUSBAND:  "I'd call the cops and get everything taken care of. And then when you got back, I'd say, 'Guess what? We're staying at the Hampton Inn tonight!'"

I don't know about you, but I think this one's a keeper.

OMG, Where Was the Second Needle?!

The last sentence is really the kicker.

April 14 (AP) A woman in Pittsburgh who said she'd been stabbed with a knitting needle is in critical condition following emergency surgery. Police spokeswoman Diane Richard says the 27-year-old woman walked into UPMC Presbyterian hospital about 9:35 p.m. Wednesday and told security guards she had been stabbed before she collapsed. Richard says doctors treated the woman for a knitting needle lodged in her abdomen and later found another knitting needle inside her body, though police aren't releasing details about the second needle.

I Got the DTs in my 2Ts

One of the greatest news stories ever. From April 11th.

(Reuters) On Friday, Taylor Dill-Reese went to an Applebee's in Madison Heights, Michigan, where -- among other things -- she ordered her 15-month-old son Dominick an apple juice. What the little boy apparently got instead was a margarita.

Why doesn't this kind of stuff ever happen to adults? How super duper would it be to say, "I'll have a Coke," and then, when you take your first drink . . . surprise, there's rum in there!

His mom told WDIV-TV that she only realized something was wrong when Dominick "kind of laid his head on the table and dozed off a little bit and woke up and got real happy."

OK, first, the kid drank it without complaint. Which was smart, if you think about it, because it seems like he enjoyed it. I certainly wouldn't grimace at my free booze, immediately call over a waiter, and demand plain ol' soda. 

Second, the kid napped and rallied, which I love. But not as much as this:

The little boy reportedly began hailing strangers, too.

Ah, a lovable, gregarious drunk in diapers. The best kind. Entertaining and no messy cleanup. I can only imagine what the baby-slur translated as:

"Hey! You! . . Yeah, you! Commeer! Yer not gonna believe this. This joooose . . . apple . . . I always get apple, and it tastes like apple, ya know? But this . . . this shit is CRAZY, man! Am I right? Shhhhhhhhhh! What a baby gotta do to get a refill? Recognize myself in a mirror? Done! That's me, there I am, and I am lovin' this sippy cup today, man! LOVIN' it!"

The company said it would change the way it serves juice to youngsters to eliminate the chance of any mixups that could result in any more toddlers receiving mixed drinks.

Oh, but then how would we get news bulletins like this in the future? Don't rain on my parade, Applebee's. Keep up the good work.