My high school

swimming coach

used to tell us

the same thing

before every match

***

“Even the most experienced swimmer can drown in three feet of water.”

***

Which is true.

***

But, of course,

***

our swimming

coach was only

two feet tall

***

So it mostly

applied to him.

.

Say, friend,

***

have you ever taken

a vacation that

was so crazy,

***

that when it was done,

***

you had to take

a vacation from

the vacation?!

***

If you have,

***

tell me this,

***

Where do you work?

.

---

I used to know

the happiest guy

in the world.

***

He was always whistling

a happy tune. He’d say,

“Whistling makes the gloomiest day seem bright”

***

And he whistled while he worked.

***

He whistled while he ate.

***

He whistled while he rested.

***

And he whistled while you

were trying to talk to him.

***

In fact—

I only knew him not

to whistle one time.

And that was when I

slapped the whistle

out of his dumb mouth.

.

---

A Merry Christmas, A Chairful Holiday, A Blithesome Trefmas, and a Happy New Y’ar to Some of You!

 

I remember the

Christmas I

asked for

Lincoln Logs.

***

That’s all I wanted

***

Lincoln Logs

***

But my folks were

practical people,

***

and instead of Lincoln Logs,

***

they got me

some Eisenhower

artificial

wood-paneling.

***

So, on

Christmas morning,

while my friends

were playing with

their Lincoln Logs,

building

forts and cabins

***

I was re-doing the den.

.

Department

stores should

have a Santa

just for

ventriloquist

dummies.

---

 

If, one day,

I wake up and

discover that

I have been

accidentally

buried alive,

the first thing

I’m going to

do — is panic.

 

If I ever get a

flesh-eating disease,

I’m going to slather

some chocolate on me,

and see if it starts

eating that, instead.

 

One day, I want to

open-up a small

Bnbnbnbnbnbnbnb.

***

That’s bed, breakfast, beep, beep, bing, bong, blap, bloop.

***

Weekends only.

***

Payment in advance.

***

Robots welcome.

Once, a beautiful woman

agreed to marry me

— on one condition.

I must never ask her

to remove the ribbon

from around her neck.

***

Naturally, I agreed.

And for years, we

were happy.

***

But I could not

stop thinking about

the ribbon. The very

thought of it began

to drive me insane.

***

So one night,

as she slept,

I reached over and

carefully eased

the ribbon away from

around her neck.

***

And for a moment

everything

seemed OK ..

THEN HER HEAD ROLLED OFF!

***

I gasped and watched as

her head rolled across

the bed. Our eyes met

for the last time in this

life, and she said,

***

“I am sure this raises far more questions than it answers.”

I hope who-ever

invented the wheel

didn’t invent it

on top of a hill.

***

Or good-bye, invention.