While watching a movie recently, I couldn't hear the dialogue over the chatter of the two women sitting in front of me. Unable to bear it any longer, I tapped one of them on the shoulder.

"Excuse me," I said, "I can't hear."

"I should hope not," she replied sharply. "This is a private conversation."

Reporters and city officials gathered at a Chicago railroad station one afternoon in 1953. The person they were meeting was the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize winner. A few minutes after the train came to a stop, a giant of a man - six feet four inches - with bushy hair and a large mustache stepped from the train. Cameras flashed. City officials approached him with hands outstretched. Various people began telling him how honored they were to meet him.

The man politely thanked them and then, looking over their heads, asked if he could be excused for a moment. He quickly walked through the crowd until he reached the side of an elderly black woman who was struggling with two large suitcases. He picked up the bags and with a smile, escorted the woman to a bus. After helping her aboard, he wished her a safe journey. As he returned to the greeting party he apologized, "Sorry to have kept you waiting."

The man was Dr. Albert Schweitzer, the famous missionary doctor who had spent his life helping the poor in Africa. In response to Schweitzer's action, one member of the reception committee said with great admiration to the reporter standing next to him, "That's the first time I ever saw a sermon walking."

- Author Unknown

Items Needed:

1. Toothpick
2. Rubber Band
3. Band Aid
4. Pencil
5. Eraser
6. Chewing Gum
7. Mint
8. Candy Kiss
9. Tea Bag

Why???

1) TOOTHPICK - to remind you to pick out the good qualities in others.

2) RUBBER BAND - to remind you to be flexible; things might not always go the way you want, but it will work out.

3) BAND AID - to remind you to heal hurt feelings, yours or someone else's. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.

4) PENCIL - to remind you to list your blessings everyday.

5) ERASER - To remind you that everyone makes mistakes and that's OK.

6) CHEWING GUM - to remind you to stick with it and you can accomplish anything.

7) MINT - to remind you that you are worth a mint.

8) CANDY KISS - to remind you that everyone needs a kiss or a hug everyday.

9) TEA BAG - to remind you to relax daily and reflect on all the positive things in your life.

Friends are a very rare jewel, indeed. They make you smile and encourage you to succeed. They lend an ear, share a word of praise and they always open their hearts to us.

Show your friends how much you care.

He prunes the foliage on your head
And trims around the ear
So you will look respectable
Wherever you appear.

With special shears he thins your hair
Then washes it with soap
Or uses some restoring stuff
To give you added hope.

Once there was couple traveling on a bus in a mountainous area. Close to their destination they decided to get off a bit early and enjoy a short walk the rest of the way.

After the couple got off the bus, it proceeded on its route, but 100 feet later a huge boulder fell on the bus, crushing it and killing everybody on board.

Upon see this happen the couple said, "We wish we were on that bus."

Why do you think they said that?

Think about it and then scroll down for the answer.

A man was trying to pull out of a parking place but bashed the bumper of the parked car in front of him.

Witnessed by a handful of pedestrians waiting for a bus, the driver got out, inspected the damage, and proceeded to write a note to leave on the windshield of the car he had hit.

The note read:

"Hello. I have just hit your car, and there are some people here watching me who think that I am writing this note to leave you my name, phone number, and driver's license number, but I am not."

Today, I was in the bathroom at a popular coffee chain. Someone wrote "What Would Jesus Do?" on the wall.

Another person wrote directly underneath that, "Wash His hands."

Then a third person wrote, "And your feet."

I have worked for many years with the hearing impaired and on a visit to the library, I happened to notice a man and a woman, both deaf, signing with intense gestures, apparently in a heated debate.

The man said something, and the woman seemed upset. She started signing her reply very fast, to the point where the man couldn't understand a word. That was when she started signing in big, wide gestures.

Finally, looking strained, her companion took her hands, "silencing" her.

Then he signed, very small and slowly, "You don't have to shout, I'm not blind."

It was a Saturday afternoon, and Ray had rushed down to the local supermarket to hurriedly pick up some hamburger rolls, chips and a few condiments. The big game was going to be on, so he was having a few friends over to watch it.

The store was loaded with shoppers and as he headed for the six item express lane, the only one that didn't have a long line, a woman completely ignoring the overhead sign slipped into the check-out line just in front of him pushing a cart piled high with groceries.

While walking through a parking lot, I tripped and fell flat on my face. As I was lying there, a woman stopped her car and called out, "Are you hurt?"

"No, I'm fine," I said.

"Oh, good," she continued. "Will you be vacating your parking space now?"

A young man, while bringing flowers to a cemetery, noticed an old Chinese man placing a bowl of rice on a nearby grave. The young man walked up to the Chinese man and asked, "When do you expect your friend to come up and eat the rice?"

The old Chinese man replied with a smile, "Same time your friend comes up to smell the flowers."

A US Navy cruiser pulled into port in Mississippi for a week's shore leave.

The first evening, the Captain was more than a little surprised to receive the following letter from the wife of a wealthy plantation owner:

"Dear Captain, Thursday will be my daughter Melinda's, coming of age party. I would like you to send four well mannered, handsome, unmarried officers. They should arrive at 8:00 p.m. prepared for an evening of polite southern conversation and dance with lovely young ladies. One last point: No, Mexican's. We don't like Mexican's."

An elderly lady came to see a young male doctor with her husband. After the consultation was finished, the elderly man suddenly asked the doctor for a piece of paper and a pen. Although a strange request, he complied, and the man quickly wrote something, then handed the folded piece of paper to the doctor. He told him to read it as soon as they had left.

Sam and George go to the bank to cash their paychecks.

After Sam cashes his check George hands the young teller his check. He moves away from the teller, counts his change, and then goes back and says to the cashier, "Hey, you gave me the wrong change!"

The cashier says: "Sir, you stepped away from the counter. There's nothing I can do about it now."

George says nothing and joins Sam who says, "She's got some nerve. You should complain to the manager!"

"Oh no," George says. "In fact, I was going to tell her that I just thought she'd like to know she gave me ten dollars too much."

Grandma Jones from the valley had never experienced a sick day in her life, so she didn't take it kindly when a bad case of the mulligrubs sent her to the hospital for observation.

By the time a pair of husky interns got Grandma tucked into bed, she had managed to complain about everything: the temperature, the lights, the skimpy gown, the food and the mattress, especially, the mattress.

Suddenly, Grandma spotted a small plastic item with a button, attached to a cord. "What's that?" she demanded.

Upon being denied, in the 1950's, membership in the exclusive Hollywood Country Club, because he was a Jew, Groucho Marx (whose father was a Jew, but whose mother was not) wrote a letter to the club's membership asking to be admitted.

"Being only half Jewish, I promise to get into the swimming pool only up to my waist."

On a BA flight from Johannesburg, a middle-aged, well-off white South African Lady has found herself sitting next to a black man. She called the cabin crew attendant over to complain about her seating.

"What seems to be the problem Madam?" asked the attendant.

"Can't you see?" she said, " You've sat me next to a kafir. I can't possibly sit next to this disgusting human. Find me another seat!"

When I was stationed at Myrtle Beach, S.C., I spent my spare time fishing in the backwaters of the Intracoastal Waterway. Soon I became a guide of sorts for some senior non-commissioned officers.

Once, a chief master sergeant hooked a 20-pound striped bass. After he reeled the fish onto the boat, he slipped the hook out of its mouth and released it back into the water.

He must have noticed the puzzled look on my face.

"Rank does have its privileges. I can't keep a fish that has more stripes than I do," he explained.

It isn't the thing you do, friend, it's the thing you leave undone,
Which gives you the bitter heartache, at the setting of the sun:
The tender words unspoken, to letter you did not write,
The flowers you might have sent, are your haunting ghosts at night.