TROUBLE

Somerset Maugham, the English writer, once wrote a story about a janitor at St Peter's Church in London. One day a young vicar discovered that the janitor was illiterate and fired him. Jobless, the man invested his meager savings in a tiny tobacco shop, where he prospered, bought another, expanded, and ended up with a chain of tobacco stores worth several hundred thousand dollars. One day the man's banker said, "You've done well for an illiterate, but where would you be if you could read and write?" "Well," replied the man, "I'd be janitor of St. Peter's Church in Neville Square." 

Bits and Pieces, June 24, 1993, p. 23.

If you could kick the person responsible for most of your troubles in the backside, you wouldn't be able to sit down for two weeks. 

Bits and Pieces, December 1990.

The photographer for a national magazine was assigned to get photos of a great forest fire. Smoke at the scene hampered him and he asked his home office to hire a plane. Arrangements were made and he was told to go at once to a nearby airport, where the plane would be waiting. When he arrived at the airport, a plane was warming up near the runway. He jumped in with his equipment and yelled, "Let's go! Let's go!" The pilot swung the plane into the wind and they soon were in the air. 

"Fly over the north side of the fire," yelled the photographer, "and make three or four low level passes." 

"Why?" asked the pilot. 

"Because I'm going to take pictures," cried the photographer. "I'm a photographer and photographers take pictures!" 

After a pause the pilot said, "You mean you're not the instructor?" 

The Jokesmith.