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An elderly man lay dying in his bed. In death's agony, he realized he smelled the aroma of his favorite chocolate chip cookies wafting up the stairs.

He gathered his remaining strength, and lifted himself from the bed. Leaning against the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom, and with even greater effort forced himself toward the stairs, gripping the railing with both hands, he crawled downstairs.  With labored breath, he leaned against the door-frame, gazing into the kitchen. Were it not for death's agony, he would have thought himself already in heaven: there, spread out upon waxed paper on the kitchen table were literally hundreds of his favorite chocolate chip cookies.

Was it heaven?  Or was it one final act of heroic love from his devoted wife, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man?

Mustering one great final effort, he threw himself toward the table, landing on his knees in a rumpled posture. His parched lips parted: the wondrous taste of the cookie was already in his mouth, seemingly bringing him back to life. The aged and withered hand trembled on its way to a cookie at the edge of the table, when it was suddenly smacked with a spatula by his wife......

"Leave those alone!" she said, "They're for after."

A woman was terribly overweight, so her doctor put her on a diet. "I want you to eat regularly for 2 days, then skip a day, and repeat this procedure for 2 weeks. The next time I see you,  you'll have lost at least 5 pounds."

When the woman returned, she shocked the doctor by losing nearly 20 pounds.

"Why, that's amazing!" the doctor said, "Did you follow my instructions?"

The woman nodded. "I'll tell you though, I thought I was going to drop dead that third day."

"From hunger, you mean?"

"No, from skipping."

An Amish boy and his father were visiting a mall. They were amazed by almost everything they saw, but especially by two shiny, silver walls that could move apart and back together again. The boy asked his father, "What is this, Father?"

The father responded "Son, I have never seen anything like this in my life, I don't know what it is."

While the boy and his father were watching wide-eyed an old lady in a wheel chair rolled up to the moving walls and pressed a button. The walls opened and the lady rolled between them into a small room. The walls closed and the boy and his father watched small circles of lights with numbers above the walls light up. They continued to watch the circles light up in the reverse direction. The walls opened up again and a beautiful 24 year old woman stepped out.

The father then said "Son, quick, go get your mother!"

Veronica was having difficulty teaching her son to swim.  

Her neighbor Monica said, "Learning is easy.  When I was young my friends threw me off of a pier.  I learned to swim very quickly."

Veronica replied, "Monica, are you sure they were trying to teach you to swim?"

A sheriff was looking for a deputy.   John interviewed for the job.

"OK," the sheriff said, "what is 1+1?"

"11", John replied.

"What two days of the week start with the letter 'T'?"

"Today and tomorrow."

"Now the last one. Who killed Abraham Lincoln?"

John thought really hard and finally said, "I don't know."

"Well, why don't you go home and work on that?", the sheriff asked.

So John went home and his wife asked him how it went.

John replied, "Great!  They already put me on a murder case!"

                       Kurt Vonnegut's commencement address at MIT

• "Wear sunscreen."

• "If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.  The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advise has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I  will dispense this advise now :"

• Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth.  Oh, never mind.  You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.  But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.

• You are not as fat as you imagine.

• Don't worry about the future.  Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.  The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.

• Do one thing every day that scares you.

• Sing.

• Don't be reckless with other people's hearts.  Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

• Floss.

• Don't waste your time on jealousy.

• Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind.  The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

• Remember compliments you receive.  Forget the insults.  If you succeed doing this, tell me how.

• Keep your love letters.  Throw away your old bank statements.

• Stretch.

• Don't feel guilty if you don't know what to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't.

• Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees.  You'll miss them when they are gone.

• Maybe you will marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't.  Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary.  Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either.  Your choices are half chance.  So are everybody else's.

• Enjoy your body.  Use it every way you can.  Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it.  It is the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

• Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

• Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

• Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

• Get to know your parents.  You never know when they'll be gone for good.  Be nice to your siblings.  They're your best link to your past and most likely to stick by you in the future.

• Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on.  Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

• Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.   Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

• Travel.

• Accept certain inalienable truths:

• Prices will rise.  Politicians will philander.  You, too, will get old.  And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.

• Respect your elders.

• Don't expect anyone else to support you.  Maybe you have a trust fund.  Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

• Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

• Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it.  Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

• But trust me on the sunscreen.

It was a typical Irish wake in a small village. The coffin was in the front parlor on some chairs, with the men
sitting in the kitchen drinking their pints and telling tall tales, and the women sitting in the parlor, sewing and lamenting the deceased.

As more and more guests arrived, they ran out of chairs. Thinking the deceased wouldn’t mind, they stood the coffin on-end in the corner and used the three chairs for the guests.  As the beer flowed, the affair soon became a full-blown Irish wake with the appropriate singing, dancing and carryings-on.

Eventually, the parish priest arrived to pay his respects.  Coming into the parlor and seeing the coffin standing in the corner, he was aghast.  "Good Jaysus..!", he thundered.  "I can’t believe what I’m seein’!!  Have you no respect for the deceased?!!  Quick, three chairs for the coffin!!!"

The mourners looked at each other blearily, shrugged and shouted: "Hip hip -hooray! Hip hip - hooray! Hip hip - hooray……!!!"

             Other Thoughts for Serious Contemplation

Last night I played a blank tape at full volume. The mime next door went nuts!

If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?

I went for a walk last night and my kids asked me how long I'd be gone.  I said, "The whole time."

After eating, do amphibians need to wait an hour before getting OUT of the water?

Why do they sterilize needles for lethal injections?

Do they have reserved parking for non-handicapped people at the Special Olympics?

If a person with multiple personalities threatens suicide, is that considered a hostage situation?

I bought some powdered water, but I don't know what to add.

It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.

You can't have everything...where would you put it?

Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.  I think I've forgotten this before.

I went to a general store.  They wouldn't let me buy anything specifically.

I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery.   When I got there, the guy was locking the front door.  I said, "Hey, the sign says you're open 24 hours."  He said, "Yes, but not in a row."

I love to go shopping.  I love to freak out salespeople.  They ask me if they can help me, and I say, "Have you got anything I'd like?"  Then they ask me what size I need, and I say, "Extra medium."

I installed a skylight in my apartment.  The people who live above me are furious.

In my house there's this light switch that doesn't do anything.  Every so often I would flick it on and off just to check.  Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Germany.  She said, "Cut it out."

On the ceilings in my house, I have paintings of the rooms above so I never have to go upstairs.

I used to work in a fire hydrant factory.  You couldn't park anywhere near the place.

I have an answering machine for my car phone.  It says, "I'm home now. But leave a message and I'll call when I'm out."

When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if I'm leaving.  Yesterday I parked my car in a tow-away zone.  When I came back the entire area was missing.

I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.

I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day because that means it's going to be up all night.

I bought a self learning record to learn Spanish.  I turned it on and went to sleep; the record got stuck.  The next day I could only stutter in Spanish.

The first requisite for immortality is death.                

Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.         

Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.    

If at first you don't succeed, you're running about average.    

Experience is the one thing you have plenty of when you're too old to get a job.   

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.    

A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.  

A woman drove me to drink and I never had the courtesy to thank her.      

Gross ignorance is 144 times worse than ordinary ignorance.    

A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines.