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Speak
in Tongue
A man working in the
produce department was asked by a lady if she could buy half a head of lettuce.
He replied
"Half a head? Are you serious? God grows these in whole heads
and that's how we sell them!"
"You mean
" she
persisted
"that after all the years I've shopped here
you won't sell me
half-a-head of lettuce?"
"Look
" he said
"If you like I'll ask the manager."
She indicated that would
be appreciated
so the young man marched to the front of the store. "You
won't believe this
but there's a lame-braided idiot of a lady back there who
wants to know if she can buy half-a-head of lettuce."
He noticed the manager
gesturing
and turned around to see the lady standing behind him
obviously
having followed him to the front of the store. "And this nice lady was
wondering if she could buy the other half" he concluded.
Later in the day the
manager cornered the young man and said
"That was the finest example of
thinking on your feet I've ever seen! Where did you learn that?" "I
grew up in Grand Rapids
and if you know anything about Grand Rapids
you know
that it's known for its great hockey teams and its ugly women."
The manager's face
flushed
and he interrupted
"My wife is from Grand Rapids!"
"And which hockey team did she play for?"
Source Unknown.
On a windswept hill in an
English country churchyard stands a drab
gray slate tombstone. The quaint
stone bears an epitaph not easily seen unless you stoop over and look closely.
The faint etchings read:
Beneath this stone
a lump
of clay
/ lies Arabella Young
/ Who on the twenty-fourth of May
/ began to
hold her tongue.
Source Unknown.
A sharp tongue is the only
edged tool that grows keener with constant use.
Washington Irving.
William Norris
the
American journalist who specialized in simple rhymes that packed a wallop once
wrote:
If your lips would keep
from
slips
Five things observe with
care:
To whom you speak; of whom you
speak;
And how
and when
and where.
William Norris.
"I have often
regretted my speech
never my silence."
Publius
a Greek sage.
Tongue twisters: Ezio
Pinza's (singer at the Metropolitan Opera) favorite was
"Three gray geese
in the green grass grazing; gray were the geese
and green was the
grazing."
Actor Laurence Olivier
often warms up with this one before going onstage: "Betty Botter bought a
bit of butter
'But
" she said
'this butter's bitter. If I put it in my
batter
it will make my batter bitter. But a bit of better butter will make my
batter better.' So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter
and it made her
batter better."
Boris Karloff lisped
and
the letter "s" was his problem. Among the twisters he used were:
"She sells seashells by the seashore"; "Sister Susie's sewing shirts
for soldiers"; "Slippery sleds slide smoothly down the
sluiceway" ; "A snifter of snuff is enough snuff for a sniff for a
snuff sniffer."
A twister used by some
radio and television announcers before they perform is: "The seething sea
ceaseth and thus the seething sea sufficeth us."
Nine out of 10 people
can't say this twice in rapid succession: "Sinful Caesar sipped his
snifter
seized his knees and sneezed."
Frederick John
Insight.
The sixth sick sheik's
sixth sheep's sick.
Source Unknown.