Age is Relative

During Vacation Bible School, the teacher in the missions room was discussing the video the children had just watched.

"Now, did any of you see the old man who had to be carried to the lake to be baptized?" she asked the class.

Several kids said they had.

"And does anyone remember how old he was?" the teacher continued.

One of the kids raised their hand. "Thirteen."

Apparently, he misheard the question. Either that, or anyone beyond the teenage years is ancient. Speaking of which, I think I'm starting to get some gray hairs...

Legendary Brother

When my brother was a baby, my parents took him with them to go out to eat. They were sitting there enjoying their meals, when out of nowhere, an enormous belch filled the room. To their shock, the sound had originated from their young son. They stared at him in disbelief, trying to comprehend that such a huge noise had come from such a small person. Everyone around them was glaring at my parents, thinking that one of them made the sound and was blaming it on the baby. No one believed that my brother had actually created that legendary burp.

Time For Dad to Come Home

When my brother was a child, he could usually tell when our father was returning from work. When Mom started crying, it was almost time for Dad to come home.

"Dad!" he would say when our father arrived. "Mom's crying again!"

"Is she watching Little House on the Prairie?" Dad asked.

"Yeah." my brother would respond.

The Finicky Doorknob

Back when my brother was a baby, my parents had a couple of friends, Tino and Timmy.

Once when Tino and Timmy were visiting my parents at the house, Timmy had to use the bathroom. My mother began to explain that the doorknob was rather persnickety. You had to jiggle it a certain way to get it to open. But Timmy wasn't listening, insisting he would be able to deal with the door.

Timmy left, and the others continued chatting with each other. After a while, they began to wonder why Timmy had been gone so long. Then they heard a small, whispering voice. "Tino. Tino!"

It was Timmy, trying to discreetly get his friend's attention, as he was unable to open the door and was trapped in the bathroom.

Mysteries of the Universe

Here's a list of some of the many mysteries of the universe.

1. When you're driving down the road, birds tend to flee in a direction that puts them in your path, rather than away from the vehicle.
2. Why they make a long pencil with forty years' worth of graphite, then stick a tiny eraser on it that lasts about three days.
3. Why ladybugs hardly ever bite people, but think my father is a delicacy.
4. Why people can remember the lyrics of songs and quote literature, but are unable to recall what countries fought in World War I or how to solve a three-variable equation.
5. How you got that bruise or cut. It could have been the pointy edge of your desk, or bumping your knee on the bed frame, or a paper cut, or from aliens painting a blue spot on your arm to confuse you into believing you're injured.
6. How you can easily find things in a cluttered mess, but are unable to recall where you put something five seconds ago.
7. The ability of condiments and dessert toppings to defy gravity when you're trying to get them out of the bottle.
8. How an annoying bug senses that you're planning to kill it, and promptly disappears in mid-air.
9. The ability to become so engrossed in something that you completely shut out everything else around you. If the building were on fire, if people were screaming and running about in a panicked frenzy, my friend would just sit there and read.
10. The illusion of time passing quickly or slowly. Sometimes these two overlap and create a paradox.
11. The sensation of falling just as you're starting to go to sleep. Falling asleep isn't supposed to be taken literally.
12. The ability of dreams to seem vividly real when you're asleep.
13. Having a dream that seems familiar in a way, like you've had a dream before which involved these characters or the same setting. Yet, you can't actually recall having another dream with those similarities.
14. The inability to find something you're searching for, despite it being in plain sight.
15. Despite winding the cord around the vacuum canister carefully, the next time you use the vacuum cleaner, there's a knot in the cord.
16. Debris spontaneously appearing in a spot you just vacuumed.
17. Why the fitted sheet claims to match the size of your mattress, but never stays tucked in on all sides.

Trigger Thumb

When I was a kid, one day the joints in my thumb locked up. My parents said that it would unlock eventually. It stayed locked for a while, longer than it usually did, and I started to grow worried.

It finally unlocked later on that day, and I went to my mother to say that it finally unlocked. I was rather relieved, I told her, as I feared that my thumb might not unlock and it would have to be amputated. My mother thought that was hilarious.