My diabetic, cynical father’s joke-telling seems to be limited to two subjects:
- His Stomach: “That was a good Triple Decker Mile-High Pile-High sandwich, but I wish there was more (chortle chortle!)”
- His Wallet: “Oh, if you want to give me too much change, that’s okay by me (har har!)”
His attempts at humor make for an embarrassing situation every time I take him out to eat or run errands. It’s bumper sticker humor: I’ve heard it a million times. It also tests the comeback skills of food servers and other merchants everywhere. Are these really jokes and poor ones at that? Or are they merely hints at manipulating people into giving him free stuff?
We’re at the bank the other day and my mostly-blind, hard-of-hearing father asks the teller behind the sound-dampening, bullet-proof glass window to repeat himself. Dad needs to sign a deposit slip. I pull out a dark credit card to help him find where to sign the slip of paper the teller has shoved underneath the glass.
And then comes the part where he wants to withdraw cash. He wants to take out $400 and tries to do the math in his head as he outlines his demands.
“Gimme two fifties… eleven twenties… uh, eight tens…. six fives…ten ones… and a roll of dollar coins.”
Invariably we have to redo the breakdown until it adds up to exactly $400. He has to have the dollar coins because for some reason, he has a virtual religious belief in “circulating” them. He’s a mint evangelist is what he is. He leaves these coins as tips. He thinks it’s funny to fool food servers into thinking he’s giving them quarters and then have them realize it’s really dollars. Ha ha. What’s not so funny is that he’s a cheap tipper, even with dollars. I always throw down more money when he isn’t looking because he thinks ten percent is a good tip.
In spite of his patience-trying ways, I have to say, the bank tellers are always nice to him. Nevertheless, I was mortified the other day, when the teller asked my father if there was anything else he could do and Dad says, “Yeah, do you have any free samples?”
Free samples???? At a bank??? GAHHH!!!!!
If I didn’t love him, I’d smack him.
Without skipping a beat, the teller said he did, reached into his drawer and slid this to my father underneath the glass:
I know!
And now I have a question for you: How many of you actually added up my dad’s money breakdown to see if it added up to $400? Also, what did it add up to, because I have no idea. I was picking the denominations and quantities arbitrarily. So I apologize if you went to all that trouble for nothing and what kind of OCD freak are you anyway, checking my math like that?
Kindle Tip of the Day
I was concerned that my many thousands and thousands of Kindle readers would be missing out on the awesome photos provided for their enjoyment on NGIP. Pictures appear smaller, not to mention in black-and-white, on the Kindle. However, I just recently discovered on my own Kindle that if you move your cursor to the photo and click, you can enlarge it. Yay!
But sometimes it enlarges it too much and it comes out blurry. In my constant strive to make the NGIP experience a stellar one to my Kindle readers, I hope to find out how reduce the amount of gray pea soup showing up on your Kindle screen when you click to enlarge. Also, it may be more of a problem with the Kindle DX, which has a larger screen.
If you or anyone you know has any advice on how to help resolve this picture issue on Kindle, I’m all ears. (margaret atsign nannygoatsinpanties period com)
