Every Friday afternoon, a mathematician goes down to the bar, sits in the second-to-last seat, turns to the last seat, which is empty, and asks a girl who isn’t there if he can buy her a drink.
The bartender, who is used to weird university types, always shrugs but keeps quiet. But when Valentine’s Day arrives, and the mathematician makes a particularly heart-wrenching plea into empty space, curiosity gets the better of the bartender, and he says, “I apologize for my stupid questions, but surely you know there is NEVER a woman sitting in that last stool. Why do you persist in asking out empty space?”
The mathematician replies, “Well, according to quantum physics, empty space is never truly empty. Virtual particles come into existence and vanish all the time. You never know when the proper wave function will collapse and a girl might suddenly appear there.”
The bartender raises his eyebrows. “Really? Interesting. But couldn’t you just ask one of the girls who comes here every Friday if you could buy HER a drink? Never know –she might say yes.”
The mathematician laughs. “Yeah, right — how likely is THAT to happen?”
Years of smoking finally caught up with my friend John one morning when he keeled over at work, clutching his heart. He was rushed to a hospital and peppered with questions.
“Do you smoke?” asked a paramedic.
“No,” John whispered. “I quit.”
“That’s good. When did you quit?”
“Around 9:30 this morning.”
Frequent hand washing in my job as a medical technologist and the harsh weather combined give me very dry skin.
One night as I prepared for bed, I rubbed my hands with petroleum jelly and covered them with an old pair of white gloves. As I sat in bed reading a book with my gloves on, my husband finished showering and came into the room wearing a towel.
Drying himself off, he went to the closet, selected a tie and put it on. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“Well,” he replied, “if you are going to be formal. So am I.”