Tense!

AN English teacher at Michigan State University spent a lot of time marking grammatical errors on her students' written work. She wasn't sure how much impact she was having until one overly busy day when she sat at her desk rubbing her temples.

A student asked, "What's the matter, Mrs. Sheridan?"

"Tense," she replied, describing her emotional state.

After a slight pause the student tried again ... "What was the matter? What has been the matter? What might have been the matter?"

A policeman is interrogating three blondes who are training to become detectives. To test their skills at recognising a suspect, he shows the first blonde a picture for five seconds and then hides it.

"This is your suspect, how would you recognise him?" The first blonde answers: "That's easy, we'll catch him fast because he only has one eye!" The policeman says, "Well...uh...he has one eye because the picture shows his profile, a side view. That's just one side of him!"

Slightly flustered by this ridiculous response, he flashes the picture for five seconds at the second blonde and asks her: "This is your suspect, how would you recognise him?"

The second blonde giggles, flips her hair and says: "Ha! He'd be easy to catch because he only has one ear!"

The policeman angrily responds: "What's the matter with you two? Of course only one eye and one ear are showing because it's a picture of his profile! Is that the best answer you can come up with?"

Extremely frustrated at this point, he shows the picture to the third blonde and in a very testy voice asks: "This is your suspect, how would you recognise him?"

The blonde looks at the picture intently for a moment and says: "Hmmmm... the suspect wears contact lenses." The policeman is surprised and speechless because he really doesn't know himself if the suspect wears contacts or not. "Well, that's an interesting answer! Wait here for a few minutes while I check his file, and I'll get back to you on that."

He leaves the room and goes to his office, checks the suspect's file in his computer and comes back with a beaming smile on his face. "Wow! I can't believe it... it's true! The suspect does, in fact, wear contact lenses. Good work! How were you able to make such an astute observation?"

"That's easy," the blonde replied. "He can't wear regular glasses, because he only has one eye and one ear!"

The other night I was invited out for a night with "the boys". I told my wife that I would be home by midnight ..promise! Well, the hours passed and the beer was going down way too easy.

At around 2:30 a.m., drunk as a skunk, I headed home. Just as I got in the door, the cuckoo clock in the hall started up and cuckooed three times. Quickly, I realised she'd probably wake up, so I cuckooed another 9 times. I was really proud of myself, having a quick-witted solution, even when smashed, to escape a possible conflict. The next morning my wife asked me what time I got in, and I told her twelve o'clock. She didn't seem disturbed at all.

Whew! Got away with that one! She then told me that we needed a new cuckoo clock. When I asked her why, she said, "Well, last night our clock cuckooed three times, then said "oh no," cuckooed four more times, cleared its throat, cuckooed another three times, giggled, cuckooed twice more, and then coughed."

(Culled from the Net by Sunil Sharma)