A little girl asked her mother for a dollar to give to an old lady in the park. Her mother was touched by the child’s kindness, and gave her the dollar. “There you are, my dear,” said the mother. “But, tell me, isn’t the lady able to work anymore?”
“Oh yes,” came the reply. “She sells candy.”
A man was sitting on the lawn sunning and reading, when he was startled by a fairly late model car crashing through a hedge and coming to rest on his lawn. He helped the elderly driver out and sat her on a lawn chair.
“My goodness,” he exclaimed, “you are quite old to be driving!”
“Yes,” she replied, “I am old enough that I don’t need a license anymore. The last time I went to my doctor he examined me and asked if I had a driver’s license.
“I told him yes and handed it to him. He took scissors out of a drawer, cut the license into pieces, and threw them in the wastebasket.
“‘You won’t be needing this anymore,’ he said. So I thanked him and left.”
No English dictionary has been able to adequately explain the difference between complete and finished.
However, in a recent linguistic conference held in London, England, and attended by some of the best linguists in the world, Samsunder Balgogin, a Guanese, was the clear winner.
His final challenge was this: “Some say there is no difference between complete and finished. Please explain the difference between complete and finished in a way that is easy to understand.”
His astute answer: “When you marry the right woman, you are complete. But, when you marry the wrong woman, you are finished. If the right one catches you with the wrong one, you are completely finished.”
His answer was received with a standing ovation.