Life in These United States
in these United States
Wise Beyond
Their Years
✦ My granddaughter’s life philosophy, which she quoted in a thirdgrade essay: “Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy cows. Cows can make milk, and milk can make ice cream, and ice cream can make you happy.”
—Joellen Turner Nucla, Colorado
✦ Wife: “The Romans were gluttons. They overdid everything.” Daughter, age 11:
“You can’t overdo water parks.” — @robcorddry
✦ I asked my cousin’s four-year-old nephew, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” He replied, “Still me!”
—R.m. via rd.com
“Gorgeous night for a walk.” —Me, moving from couch to chair. — @alyssalimp
Prior to dinner, my 80-year-old mother-inlaw stopped off at the beauty parlor. “All the women did was complain about their husbands,” she said over our entrees.
“Did you complain about your husband?”
I asked, adding a sly nod toward my father-in-law.
“I didn’t have to,” she said. “They all know him.” —Cynthia Boehning Janesville, Wisconsin
My friend George adopted an adorable but stubborn Australian terrier puppy who refused to be housebroken.
Prayers for my husband, who, very tragically, got me nothing for our anniversary when I specifically told him I wanted nothing for our anniversary.
— @mommajessiec
Frustrated, George signed them both up for expensive obedience classes.
Recently, I saw man and pup out for a walk and asked how the training went.
“Well,” George said, “I don’t poop in the house anymore.” —Jane Hamilton O’fallon, Missouri
Maybe it’s the harsh winters, but people from Maine are known to be tough nuts to crack. Consider this evidence, courtesy of author Jennifer Finney Boylan: “There’s a story about the time Mark Twain gave a reading at a bookstore near Bangor to a crowd that sat there in stony silence,” she wrote in the New York
Times. “Afterward, Twain heard a couple talking. The wife said, ‘I think that might have been the funniest person I’ve ever heard in my life.’ The husband replied, ‘I’ll tell ya, he was so funny, it was all I could do to keep from laughing.’”