A Mother's Letter to Her Son

My Dear Son:

Just a few lines to let you know I'm still alive.  I'm writing this letter slowly because I know you can't read fast.  You won't know the house when you come home; we've moved.  It was a lot of trouble moving.  The most difficult was the bed...you see the man wouldn't let us take it in one piece.  It wouldn't have been too bad if your father hadn't been sleeping in it at the time.

About your father, he has a lovely new job.  He has 500 men under him.  He's cutting the grass in the cemetery.

Your sister got herself engaged to that fellow she's been going out with.  He gave her a beautiful new ring, with three stones missing.

Our neighbors, the Browns, started to keep pigs.  We got wind of it this morning.  I got my appendix out and a dishwasher put in.  There was a washing machine in the new house when we moved in but it isn't working too good.  I put 4 shirts in it, pulled the chain, and I haven't seen the shirts since.

Your little brother came home from school yesterday crying.  All the boys in the school have new suits.  We can't afford to buy him a new suit, but we are going to buy him a new hat and let him look out of the window.

Your sister had a baby this morning.  I haven't heard yet if it's a boy or a girl, so I don't know if you're an aunt or an uncle yet.  Your uncle Buck was drowned in a vat of whiskey last week.  Four of his workmates dived in to save him, but he fought them off bravely.  We cremated him and it took three days to put out the fire.

Your father didn't have much to drink for Christmas.  I put a pint of castor oil in his pint of beer.  It kept him going till New Year's day.

I went to the Dr.  on Thursday: your father came with me.  The Dr.  put a small glass tube in my mouth and told me not to open it for 10 minutes.  Your father offered to buy it from him.  It only rained twice since last week.  First for three days and them for four days.  It was so windy on Monday one of our chickens laid the same egg four times.
We had a letter from the undertaker.  He said if the last instalment wasn't paid on your grandmother within seven days, up she comes.  I must close now because someone is coming to repair the pipes and there is a shocking smell.

Your loving Mother, PS I was going to send you $10 but I had already sealed the envelope.

Thanks to Norma K. Appel for sending today's CleanLaugh. 

Dear Pastor Tim, this is a true story.

It was Thanksgiving day and my friend's hall bathroom was not working.

She had another bathroom off the master bedroom so she asked her pre-teen daughter to put a sign on the hall bathroom door and then close it.

Charlie was playing with his little brother Mickey when the little boy asked whether he could fly like Superman.

"Sure you can, Mickey," Charlie said. "Just flap your arms really hard."

So Mickey climbed up on the windowsill, started flapping like mad, jumped, then smashed into the ground just a few inches below.

Horrified, their mother came screaming into the room and said, "What happened?"

Charlie said, "I was just teaching Mickey not to believe everything he's told."

I was driving with my three young children one warm summer evening when a woman in the convertible ahead of us stood up and waved. 

She was stark naked! 

As I was reeling from the shock, I heard my five-year-old shout from the back seat,

"Mom! That lady isn't wearing a seat belt!"

I was with a friend in a cafe' when a noisy car alarm interrupted our conversation.

"What good are car alarms when no one pays any attention to them?" I wondered aloud.

"Some are quite effective," my friend corrected me.

"Last summer, my teenager spent a lot of time at the neighbors'.

Whenever I wanted him home, I'd go out to the driveway and jostle his car."

Her teenage son was having trouble mastering the fine points of balancing his new checking account.

"The bank returned the check you wrote to the sporting goods store," she said.

"Oh good," he said,

"Now I can use it to buy some stereo equipment!"

At one point during a game, the coach said to one of his young players, "Do you understand what cooperation is? What a team is?" The little boy nodded yes.

"Do you understand that what matters is whether we win together as a team?" The little boy nodded yes.

"So," the coach continued, "when a strike is called, or you are out at first, you don't argue or curse or attack the umpire. Do you understand all that?" Again, the boy nodded yes.

"Good," said the coach. "Now go over there and explain it to your mother."

When I was a mother's helper, the mom of the family I worked for sat with her three oldest children and watched a PBS special showing the birth of a baby. The mom thought it would be a good starting point for answering questions about the facts of life.

As her five-year-old studied the baby coming out of the birth canal, he asked, "Mom, does that hurt?"

"Oh, yes, it does," she said, remembering her difficult deliveries.

"Wow," he continued in awe, "does it hurt the mother too?"

The mother of a large family was explaining why she dresses her children alike, right down to the youngest baby.

"When we had just four children, I dressed them alike so we wouldn't lose any of them."

"Now," she added, looking around at her brood of nine, "I dress them alike so we won't pick up any that don't belong to us."

You should be able to park in an “expecting mother” parking space if you’re waiting for your mom.

A young man called his mother and announced excitedly that he had just met the woman of his dreams. Now what should he do?

His mother had an idea: "Why don't you send her flowers, and on the card invite her to your apartment for a home-cooked meal?"

He thought this was a great strategy, and a week later, the woman came to dinner. His mother called the next day to see how things had gone.

"I was totally humiliated," he moaned. "She insisted on washing the dishes."

"What's wrong with that?" asked his mother.

"We hadn't started eating yet."

The eight-year old boy had never spoken a word-ever.

One afternoon, as he sat eating his lunch he turned to his mother and said, "Soup's cold."

His astonished mother exclaimed, "Son, I've waited so long to hear you speak. But all these years you never said a thing. Why haven't you spoken before?"

The boy looked at her and replied, "Up until now, everything's been okay."

A man walked into a flower shop and after looking around for several minutes, asked the clerk if there were any potted geraniums he could buy.

"I'm sorry," said the clerk in flower shop,

"We don't have potted geraniums. Could you use African violets instead?"

Replied the customer sadly,

"No, it was geraniums my wife told me to water while she was gone."

A boy was helping his mother bring the clothes in off the line as a storm threatened.

As they brought in the last armload and closed the door, the boy waved his hand at the heavens and said, "Okay God! Let'er go!"

The following have been taken from papers written by a class of 8-year-olds.

A grandmother is a lady who has no little children of her own.  She likes other people's.

A grandfather is a man grandmother.

Grandmothers don't have to do anything except be there when we come to see them.  They are so old they shouldn't play hard or run.  It is good if they drive us to the store and have lots of quarters for us.

When they take us for walks, they slow down past things like pretty leaves and caterpillars.

They show us and talk to us about the color of the flowers and also why we shouldn't step on "cracks."

They don't say, "Hurry up."

Usually grandmothers are fat, but not too fat to tie your shoes.

They wear glasses and funny underwear.

They can take their teeth and gums out.

Grandmothers don't have to be smart.

They have to answer questions like, "Why isn't God married?" and "How come dogs chase cats?"

When they read to us, they don't skip.  They don't mind if we ask for the same story over again.

Everybody should try to have a grandmother, especially if you don't have television, because they are the only grown ups who like to spend time with us.

They know we should have snack-time before bedtime and they say prayers with us every time, and kiss us even when we've acted bad.

I want to be a bear......

If you're a bear, you get to hibernate. You do nothing but sleep for six months. I could deal with that.

Before you hibernate, you're supposed to eat yourself stupid. I could deal with that too.

If you're a bear, you birth your children (who are the size of walnuts) while you are sleeping and wake to partially grown, cute, cuddly cubs. I could definitely deal with that.

Mrs. Jones was reading a letter at breakfast.

Suddenly she looked up suspiciously at her husband.

"Henry," she said, "I've just received a letter from mother saying she isn't accepting our invitation to come and stay, as we do not appear to want her. What does she mean by that? I told you to write and say that she was to come at her own convenience. You did write, didn't you?"

"Er, yes, I did," said the husband. "But I couldn't spell convenience, so I made it risk."

Sometimes being a mother is a dish best served cold after 29 years.

This is rather lengthy but funny.

*Laws Pertaining to Dessert*

For we judge between the plate that is unclean and the plate that is clean, saying first, if the plate is clean, then you shall have dessert.

But of the unclean plate, the laws are these: If you have eaten most of your meat, and two bites of your peas with each bite consisting of not less than three peas each, or in total six peas, eaten where I can see, and you have also eaten enough of your potatoes to fill two forks, both forkfuls eaten where I can see, then you shall have dessert. But if you eat a lesser number of peas, and yet you eat the potatoes, still you shall not have dessert; and if you eat the peas, yet leave the potatoes uneaten, you shall not have dessert, no, not even a small portion thereof.

When the man came home, his wife was crying.

"Your mother insulted me," she sobbed.

"My mother? How could she do that when she is on vacation on the other side of the world?" the man asked.

"I know. But this morning a letter addressed to you and marked private arrived. I opened it because I was curious."

"And?"

"At the end of the letter it was written: PS. Dear Diane, when you have finished reading this letter, don't forget to give it to my son."

A little boy forgot his lines in a Sunday School presentation.

His mother, sitting in the front row to prompt him, gestured and formed the words silently with her lips, but it didn't help. Her son's memory was blank.

Finally, she leaned forward and whispered the cue, "I am the light of the world."

The child beamed and with great feeling and a loud, clear voice said, "My mother is the light of the world."

My kids love going to the Web, and they keep track of their passwords by writing them on Post-it notes.

I noticed their Disney password was "MickeyMinnieGoofyPluto," and so I asked why it was so long.

"Because," my son explained, "they say it has to have at least four characters."

A mother was telling her little girl what her own childhood was like.

She said, "We used to skate outside on a pond. I had a swing made from a tire; it hung from a tree in our front yard. We rode our pony. We picked wild raspberries in the woods."

The little girl was wide-eyed, taking this in.

At last she said, "I sure wish I'd gotten to know you sooner!"

I don't think I'll ever have a mother's intuition.

My sister left me alone in a restaurant with my 10-month-old nephew.

I said, "What do I do if he cries?"

She said "Give him some vegetables."

It turns out that jalapeno is not his favorite.

A strained voice called out through the darkened theater, "Please, is there a doctor in the house?!"

Several men stood up as the lights came on.

An older lady pulled her daughter to stand next to her, "Good, are any of you doctors single and interested in a date with a nice, girl?"

Two mothers were talking about their sons.

The first said, "My son is such a saint. He works hard, doesn't smoke, and he hasn't so much as looked at a woman in over two years."

The other woman said, "Well, my son is a saint himself. Not only has he not looked at a woman in over three years, but he hasn't touched a drop of liquor in all that time."

"My word," the first mother said. "You must be so proud."

"I am," the second mother replied. "And when he's paroled next month, I'm going to throw him a big party."

To prepare for my daughter's First Communion, I called the church in the town where we used to live to get a copy of her baptismal certificate. We lived there for only a short while, so I didn't know the priest there well.

When the secretary asked me the name of the father, I told her that I couldn't remember.

After a brief silence, she chuckled and said, "Ma'am, I'm talking about the name of the baby's father."

After an overnight flight to meet my father at his latest military assignment, my mother wearily arrived at Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany with my eight siblings and me - all under age 11. Collecting our many suitcases, the ten of us entered the cramped customs area.

A young customs official watched our entourage in disbelief, "Ma'am," he said, "do all these children and this luggage belong to you?"

One Sunday morning, a mother knocks on her son's bedroom door and tells him it's time to get up and go to church.

"I'm not going to church this morning," the son says.

"You gotta get up and go to church," says mother.

"No, I'm not," says the son.

"Yes, you are!" says the mother.

"No, I'm not. They don't like me and I don't like them," says the son. "Give me two good reasons why I have to go." 

So the mother patiently replies, "Number one, you're 55 years old. And number two, you're the pastor!"

Look Bruce, just because you call it the "Batcave" doesn't change the fact that you still live in your parents basement.

The hardest part of parenting is realizing that it is your circus and those definitely are your monkeys.

When I was young, if any of us kids got sick, my mother would bring out the chicken soup. Of course, that didn't' work for broken bones; for broken bones, she gave us boiled beef.

- George Burns

What's it like having a toddler?

Imagine raising a heavily caffeinated chimpanzee who is allergic to sleep.

"Who are these kids and why are they calling me Mom?"

I was scheduled to fly from North Carolina to Germany, where my husband was stationed in the military.

As I checked in at the airport, the ticket agent asked me some standard security questions.

"Has anyone given you any packages that you didn't pack yourself?" he asked.

When my wife quit work to take care of our new baby daughter, countless hours of peekaboo and other games slowly took their toll. One evening she smacked her bare toes on the corner of a dresser and, grabbing her foot, sank to the floor.

I rushed to her side and asked where it hurt.

She looked at me through tear-filled eyes and managed to moan,

"It's the piggy that ate roast beef."

As a member of the organization that installs computer systems aboard Navy ships, I am mindful of how important the off-ship e-mail capabilities are to sailor morale, especially when some vessels are deployed for up to six months.

One day while shopping at the base commissary, I noticed another crucial aspect of my job. I was trailing a frazzled mother with two active children, and I watched as she stalked over to where her young son had perched himself on the rail of the freezer case.

"If you don't get off there right now," she commanded, "I'm going to e-mail your father!"

While on maternity leave, a woman from our office brought in her new bundle of joy.

She also had her seven-year-old son with her.

Everyone gathered around the baby, and the little boy asked, "Mommy, can I have some money to buy a soda?"

"What do you say?" she asked.

Respectfully, the boy replied, "You're thin and beautiful."

The woman reached in her purse and gave her son the money.

While studying the occult, a teacher asked one of the boys in her class, "Can people predict the future with cards?"

His response was, "My mother can."

The teacher replied, "Really?"

The young boy was quick to explain, "Yes, she takes one look at my report card and tells me what will happen when my father gets home."

We had spent the day moving from our farmhouse into our new house in town.

Early the next morning, a Saturday, our 3 1/2-year-old ran into our bedroom to wake us up.

I dressed him and told him to play in the yard and to quit bothering us.

About 20 minutes later, he came running back.

"Mommy, Mommy," he exclaimed, "everybody has doorbells - and they all work."

My son Zachary, 4, came screaming out of the bathroom to tell me he'd dropped his toothbrush in the toilet.

So I fished it out and threw it in the garbage.

Zachary stood there thinking for a moment, then ran to my bathroom and came out with my toothbrush.

He held it up and said with a charming little smile, "We better throw this one out too then, 'cause it fell in the toilet a few days ago."

Thanks to list member Lowell Guebert for sending in this real life, happened to her, CleanLaugh.

Two of our grandchildren (Kevin, age 8 and Jeremy age 13) were doing some school homework in the same room at home when Kevin goofed on something or other.

Kevin: "Oh, silly me! I forgot!"

Jeremy: "Well, Kevin, if forgetting stuff is silly, then Mom's hilarious."

I think I'll tell my kids that the Titanic sunk because Jack and Rose had sex before marriage.

Late one Saturday evening, I was awakened by the ringing of my phone.

In a sleepy grumpy voice I said hello. The party on the other end of the line paused for a moment before rushing breathlessly into a lengthy speech.

"Mom, this is Susan and I'm sorry I woke you up, but I had to call because I'm going to be a little late getting home. See, Dad's car has a flat but it's not my fault. Honest! I don't know what happened. The tire just went flat while we were inside the theater. Please don't be mad, okay?"

Since I don't have any daughters, I knew the person had dialed my number by mistake.

"I'm sorry dear," I replied, "but you've reached the wrong number. I don't have a daughter named Susan."

"Wow, Mom," the young woman's voice replied. "I didn't think you'd be this mad."

The mother of three notoriously unruly youngsters was asked whether or not she'd have children if she had to do over again.

"Sure," she replied, "but not the same ones."

Out in Kansas, tornadoes often hit with sudden devastation, and without warning. In one case, a house was completely whisked away leaving only the foundation and first floor. A silver-haired farm lady was seen sitting dazed, in a bathtub, the only remaining part of the house left above the floor.

The rescue squad rushed to her aid and found her unhurt. She was just sitting there in the tub, talking to herself. "It was the darndest thing...  it was the darndest thing." she kept repeating dazedly.

Although we had recently moved into a new neighborhood, our young son had already made many new friends, ten of whom were invited to his birthday party. When the happy day arrived and he opened his presents, I was amazed to see that eight guests had presented him with sweaters.

Later I visited the mother of one of the boys to explain about the multiplicity of sweaters in the hope that an exchange might be arranged.

She said coolly, "Well, after all, you were the one who wrote on the invitation what you wanted me to buy."

This husband and wife decided to have some fun and surprise all their friends and family with the big news of not just gender, but having twins.

*Things Not To Say to Your Pregnant Wife*

17.  "I finished the Oreos"

16.  "Not to imply anything, but I don't think the kid weighs 40 pounds."

Three mothers are sitting on a park bench talking about (what else?) how much their sons love them.

Sadie says "You know the Chagall painting hanging in my living room? My son, Arnold, bought that for me for my 75th birthday. What a good boy he is and how much he loves his mother."

Minnie says,"You call that love? You know the Eldorado Cadillac I got for Mother's Day? That's from my son Bernie. What a doll."

Shirley says "That's nothing. You know my son Stanley? He's in analysis with a psychoanalyst on Park Ave. Five session a week. And what does he talk about? Me."