Military training easy

Dear Ma and Pa:

I am well. Hope you are. Tell Brother Walt and Brother Elmer the Marine
Corps beats working for old man Minch by a mile. Tell them to join up
quick before maybe all of the places are filled. I was restless at
first because you got to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m., but am getting
so I like to sleep late.

Tell Walt and Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot and
shine some things. No hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to
split, fire to lay. Practically nothing. Men got to shave but it is not
so bad, there's warm water.

Breakfast is strong on trimmings like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon,
etc., but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak, fried eggplant,
pie and other regular food. But tell Walt and Elmer you can always sit
by the two city boys that live on coffee. Their food plus yours holds
you till noon, when you get fed again.

It's no wonder these city boys can't walk much. We go on "route"
marches, which the Platoon Sergeant says are long walks to harden us.
If he thinks so, it is not my place to tell him different. A "route
march" is about as far as to our mailbox at home. Then the city guys
get sore feet and we all ride back in trucks. The country is nice, but
awful flat.

The Sergeant is like a schoolteacher. He nags some. The Capt. is like
the school board. Majors and Colonels just ride around and frown. They
don't bother you none.

This next will kill Walt and Elmer with laughing. I keep getting medals
for shooting. I don't know why. The bulls-eye is near as big as a
Chipmunk head and don't move. And it ain't shooting at you, like the
Higgett boys at home. All you got to do is lie there all comfortable
and hit it. You don't even load your own cartridges. They come in
boxes.

Then we have what they call hand-to-hand combat training. You get to
wrestle with them city boys. I have to be real careful though, They
break real easy. It ain't like fighting with that ole bull at home.

I'm about the best they got in this except for that Tug Jordan from
over in Silver Lake. He joined up the same time as me. But I'm only
5'6" and 130 pounds and he's 6'8" and weighs near 300 pounds dry.

Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to hurry and join before other fellers
get onto this setup and come stampeding in.

Your loving daughter,
Gail

HYMNS FOR THE OVER-FIFTY CROWD

1. Precious Lord, Take My Hand and Help Me Up.

2. It is Well with My Soul, But My Knees Hurt.

3. Nobody Knows the Trouble I Have Seeing.

4. Just a Little Slower Walk With Thee.

5. Count Your Many Birthdays, Count Them One by One By One By One.

6. Go Tell It On The Mountain, But Speak Up.

7. Give Me The Old Timers' Religion.

8. Blessed Insurance.

9. Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah! I've Forgotten Where I Parked.

10. AH MEN.

Loving Daughters

Three mothers were sitting around comparing notes on their exemplary offspring.

"There never was a daughter more devoted than my Alice ," said Mrs. Davis with a sniff. "Every summer she takes me to the Catskills for a week, and every winter we spend a week at Delray Beach ."

"That's nothing compared to what my Anna does for me," declared Mrs. Jones proudly. "Every winter she treats me to two weeks in Miami , and in the summer two weeks in the Hamptons , in my own private guest house."

Mrs. Smith sat back with a proud smile. "Nobody loves her mother like my Jackie does. Nobody."

"So what does she do?" asked the two women, turning to her.

"Three times a week she gets into a cab, goes to the best psychiatrist in the city, and pays him a hundred and fifty dollars an hour - just to talk about me!"

DRIVING WITH THE LORD

A drunk and a preacher were driving up a mountain side in different vehicles. The drunk was swerving from side to side; the preacher was driving straight and true.

All of a sudden, the preacher lost control and drove off the edge of a cliff. The drunk noticed the preacher going off the edge, so he stopped his car and went to see if he was all right. He noticed the preacher was climbing up the hillside.

He yelled down at the preacher, "Are you alright?"

And the preacher replied, "Have no fear my son, I had the Lord riding with me."

The drunk then yelled back, "You had better let him ride with me next time. cuz your gonna get him killed!"

Gift with diamonds in it

Bill meets Doug shopping at the mall and sees he has a small gift wrapped box.

"It's my wife's birthday tomorrow." Doug said. "Last week I asked her what
she wanted for her birthday." "And???" Bill asked.

"Well, she said 'Oh, I don't know just give me something with diamonds in it'."

"So what did you get her?" asked Bill.

"I bought her a deck of cards!!"

Which dress suits the lady ?

Shortly after the birth of their second child, a husband offered to take his wife shopping for a new dress. He endured more than two hours of listening to her complaints about which figure flaw each dress accentuated.

As she emerged from the dressing room, having tried on the last selection, she asked for her husband's opinion. By this time he had learned just the right things to say.

"It's perfect!" he exclaimed. "It makes your waist look smaller, your legs look longer, and slenderizes your hips." Just then another lady in the dressing room spoke out. "If there is a dress here that will do that, I'll buy them all!"

What takes ladies so long in the bathroom ?

This is dedicated to all women everywhere who have ever had to deal with a public toilet. And it finally explains to all you men what takes us so long.

My mother was a fanatic about public toilets. As a little girl, she'd bring me in the stall, teach me to wad up toilet paper and wipe the seat. Then, she'd carefully lay strips of toilet paper to cover the seat. Finally, she'd instruct, "Never, never sit on a public toilet seat." And she'd demonstrate "The Stance," which consisted of balancing over the toilet in a sitting position without actually letting any of your
flesh make contact with the toilet seat. But by this time, I'd have peed down my leg. And we'd go home.

That was a long time ago. I've had lots of experience with public toilets since then, but I'm still not particularly fond of public toilets, especially those with powerful, red-eye sensors. Those toilets know when you want them to flush. They are psychic toilets. But I always confuse their psychic ability by following my mother's advice and assuming The Stance. The Stance is excruciatingly difficult to maintain when one's bladder is especially full. This is most likely to occur after watching a full-length feature film.

During the movie pee, it is nearly impossible to hold The Stance. You know what I mean. You drink a two liter cup of Diet Coke, then sit still through a three-hour saga because, for God's sake, even if you didn't wipe or wash your hands in the bathroom, you'd still miss the pivotal part of the movie or the second scene, in which they flash the leading man's naked derriere.

So, you cross your legs and you hold it. And you hold it until that first credit rolls and you sprint to the bathroom, about ready to explode all over your internal organs. And at the bathroom, you find a line of women that makes you think there's a half-price sale on Mel Gibson's underwear in there.

So, you wait and smile politely at all the other ladies, also crossing their legs and smiling politely. And you finally get closer. You check for feet under the stall doors. Every one is occupied. You hope no one is doing frivolous things behind those stall doors, like blowing her nose or checking the contents of her wallet.

Finally, a stall door opens and you dash, nearly knocking down the woman leaving the stall. You get in to find the door won't latch. It doesn't matter. You hang your handbag on the door hook, yank down your pants and assume The Stance.

Relief. More relief. Then your thighs begin to shake. You'd love to sit down but you certainly hadn't taken time to wipe the seat or lay toilet paper on it, so you hold The Stance as your thighs experience a quake that would register an eight on the Richter scale. To take your mind off it, you reach for the toilet paper. Might as well be ready when you are done. The toilet paper dispenser is empty.

Your thighs shake more. You remember the tiny napkin you wiped your fingers on after eating buttered popcorn. It would have to do. You crumble it in the puffiest way possible. It is still smaller than your thumbnail. Someone pushes open your stall door because the latch doesn't work and your pocketbook whams you in the head. "Occupied!" you scream as you reach out for the door, dropping your buttered popcorn napkin in a puddle and falling backward, directly onto the toilet seat. You get
up quickly, but it's too late. Your bare bottom has made contact with all the germs and life forms on the bare seat because YOU never laid down toilet paper, not that there was any, even if you had enough time to. Your mother would be utterly ashamed of you if she knew, because her bare bottom never touched a public toilet seat because, frankly, "You don't know what kind of diseases you could get."

By this time, the automatic sensor on the back of the toilet is so confused that it flushes, sending up a stream of water akin to a fountain and then it suddenly sucks everything down with such force that you grab onto the toilet paper dispenser for fear of being dragged to China.

At that point, you give up. You're finished peeing. You're soaked by the splashing water. You're exhausted. You try to wipe with a Chicklet wrapper you found in your pocket, then slink out inconspicuously to the sinks. You can't figure out how to operate the sinks with the automatic sensors, so you wipe your hands with spit and a dry paper towel and walk past a line of women, still waiting, cross-legged and unable to smile politely at this point.

One kind soul at the very end of the line points out that you are trailing a piece of toilet paper on your shoe as long as the Mississippi River. You yank the paper from your shoe, plunk it in the woman's hand and say warmly, "Here You might need this."
At this time, you see your spouse, who has entered, used and exited his bathroom and read a copy of War and Peace while waiting for you. "What took you so long?" he asks, annoyed. This is when you kick him sharply in the shin and go home.