Over the years, my husband and I have usually managed to decode the cute but confusing gender signs sometimes put on restaurants' restroom doors (Buoys and Gulls, Laddies and Lassies, etc.), but every so often we get stumped.

Recently my husband Dave wandered off in search of the men's room and found himself confronted by two marked doors. One was labeled "Bronco," and the other was designated "Cactus."

Completely baffled, he stopped a restaurant employee passing by."Excuse me; I need to use the restroom," Dave said. Gesturing toward the doors, he asked, "Which one should I use?"

When our son was four months old, I caught sight of my husband in another room, holding the baby on his lap, talking to him and pointing.

I was touched by this father-son bonding and went into the room to eavesdrop.

The Times, 6 July 2002

Lavatory Blocked by 6ft Python
From Andrew Drummond in Bangkok

A family in Singapore spent two days in terror after a 6ft python took refuge in their lavatory bowl. The snake, which had managed to climb ten floors up to their flat, was found by Tan Kok Chy, a taxi driver, as it slithered into his bathroom on Tuesday. By the time the Police arrived, it had disappeared down the loo.

Mr. Tan covered the bowl with a wooden washing board and weighed it down with a bucket of water. 'It was very inconvenient,' Mr. Tan's son, Tan Cheng Peng, 28, told The Straits Times. 'We had no choice but to use the toilet, so we used it as quickly as possible, keeping an eye out for the snake.'

It re-emerged on Thursday, was caught and given to Singapore Zoo.

A motorcycle patrolman was rushed to the hospital with an inflamed
appendix. The doctors operated and advised him that all was well.

However, the patrolman kept feeling something pulling at the
hairs on his chest. Worried that it might mean second surgery the
doctors hadn't told him about, he finally got enough energy to
pull his hospital gown down enough so he could look at what was
making him so uncomfortable.

Taped firmly across his hairy chest were three wide strips of
adhesive tape, the kind that doesn't come off. Written in large black letters was the sentence.

When my husband was driving down Decker Lane with my (then) 7-year-
old son, Jesse, they passed the Decker Creek Power Station, a sub-
service to our city's electrical supply.

I was getting ready for a garage sale one summer day. Since it was so humid out, I decided to stay inside my air-conditioned house and mark the special stickers I had bought for the sale.

Then I slapped them on my blouse, ran outside, stuck them on the appropriate items and rushed back inside. I did this until every item was labeled.

Later that day a UPS man came by the house with a delivery. I noticed that as I was signing for the package, he seemed ill at ease.

For my fourth Caesarian section I opted for a bikini incision, which, along with the previous scars, would form an arrow on my tummy.

In a stationery store, I quickly picked out a card for my wife for our anniversary. The clerk was surprised by how little time it took me, and she began relating a story about another customer who spent a half-hour searching for the right anniversary greeting.

LIVING YOUR REDNECK DREAMS!

Larry Walters is among the relatively few who have actually turned theirdreams into reality. His story is true, though you may find it hard to believe.

Larry was a truck driver, but his life long dream was to fly. When he
graduated from high school, he joined the Air Force in hopes of becoming a pilot. Unfortunately, poor eyesight disqualified him. So when he finally left the service, he had to satisfy himself with watching others fly the fighter jets that criss-crossed the skies over his backyard. As he sat there in his lawn chair, he dreamed about the magic of flying.

Then one day, Larry Walters got an idea. He went down to the local
Army-Navy surplus store and bought a tank of helium and forty-five weatherballoons. These were not your brightly colored party balloons, these wereheave-duty spheres measuring more than four feet across when fullyinflated. Back in his yard, Larry used straps to attach the balloons to his lawn chair, the kind you might have in your own back yard.

He anchored the chair to the bumper of his jeep and inflated the balloonswith helium. Then he packed some sandwiches and drinks and loaded a BB gun, figuring he could pop a few of those balloons when it was time to return to earth.

His preparations complete, Larry Walters sat in his chair and cut the
anchoring cord. His plan was to lazily float back down to terra firma. Butthings didn't quite work out that way.

When Larry cut the cord, he didn't float lazily up; he shot up as if firedfrom a cannon! Nor did he go up a couple hundred feet. He climbed andclimbed until he finally leveled off at eleven thousand feet! At thatheight, he could hardly risk deflating any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load and really experience flying! So he stayed up there, sailing around for fourteen hours, totally at a loss as to how to get down.

Eventually, Larry drifted into the approach corridor for Los Angeles
International Airport. A Pan Am pilot radioed the tower about passing a guy in a lawn chair at eleven thousand feet with a gun in his lap. (Now there's a conversation I'd have given anything to have heard!)

LAX is right on the ocean, and you may know that at nightfall, the winds on the coast begin to change. So, as dusk fell, Larry began drifting out to sea.

At that point, the Navy dispatched a helicopter to rescue him. But the
rescue team had a hard time getting to him, because the draft from theirpropeller kept pushing his homemade contraption farther and farther away.

Eventually they were able to hover over him and drop a rescue line withwhich they gradually hauled him back to earth.

As soon as Larry hit the ground, he was arrested. But as he was being led away in handcuffs, a television reported called out, "Mr. Walters, why'dyou do it?"

Larry stopped, eyed the man, then replied nonchalantly, "A man can't just sit around." :d

Russ and Sandy Asbury of Whitewater, Wis., told an Associated Press reporter in February that their two cats, Boots and Bandit,now each 2 years old, have driven up the couple's water bill recently because they have learned to flush toilets. Said Russ, "We have to shut the bathroom door when we go to bed. Otherwise one or the other of the cats are in there flushing away all night."

In her memoirs, Barbara Bush described one of those most embarrassing moments that inevitably occur, even on the most carefully planned of foreign trips. Along with her husband, then the Vice President, Mrs. Bush was lunching with Emperor Hirohito at Tokyo's Imperial Palace.

Sitting next to the Emperor, Mrs. Bush found the conversation an uphill task. To all her efforts at verbal engagement, the Emperor would smile and say "Yes" or "No," with an occasional "Thank You" tossed in for good measure.

Looking around her elegant surroundings, she complimented Hirohito on his official residence.

"Thank you," he said.

"Is it new?" pressed Mrs. Bush.

"Yes."

"Was the old palace just so old that it was falling down?" asked Mrs. Bush.

In his most charming, yet regal, matter, Hirohito replied,
"No, I'm afraid that you bombed it."

One night while I was cat-sitting my daughter's indoor feline, it
escaped outside. When it failed to return the following morning, I
found the beast clinging to a branch about 30 feet up in a spindly
tree. Unable to lure it down, I called the fire department.

"We don't do that anymore," the woman dispatcher said. When I persisted, she was polite but firm. "The cat will come down when it gets hungry enough."

How do you know that?" I asked.

"Have you ever seen a cat skeleton in a tree?" she said.

Our church was planning a chili supper for the homeless, and my wife, Florence, agreed to prepare four gallons of her rather mild variation.

The man in charge of organizing the program asked Florence how she would describe her chili -- three alarm or four alarm.

One night while I was cat-sitting my daughter's indoor feline, it
escaped outside. When it failed to return the following morning, I
found the beast clinging to a branch about 30 feet up in a spindly
tree. Unable to lure it down, I called the fire department.

"We don't do that anymore," the woman dispatcher said. When I
persisted, she was polite but firm. "The cat will come down when
it gets hungry enough."

How do you know that?" I asked.

"Have you ever seen a cat skeleton in a tree?" she said.

Two hours later the cat was back, looking for breakfast.

After my divorce, I turned to computer dating services, which provided me with names and phone numbers of women whose profiles seemed a good match for me.

Nervously, I picked up the phone and called the first woman on my list. To my great relief, she was quite pleasant, and I actually mustered up the courage to ask her out.

"I'm sorry," she replied firmly. "I just can't do that."

I was stunned. "Do you mind my asking why not?" I asked.