Hills Like White Elephants

By Ernest Hemingway

'It's pretty hot,' the man said.

'Let's drink beer.'

'Dos cervezas,' the man said into the curtain.

'Big ones?' a woman asked from the doorway.

'Yes. Two big ones.'

The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glass on the table and looked at the man and the girl. The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry.

'They look like white elephants,' she said.

'I've never seen one,' the man drank his beer.

'No, you wouldn't have.'

'I might have,' the man said. 'Just because you say I wouldn't have doesn't prove anything.'

The girl looked at the bead curtain. 'They've painted something on it,' she said. 'What does it say?'

'Anis del Toro. It's a drink.'

English Joke - Coins

Download: 9979.mp3

A guy says to his friend, "Guess how many coins I have in my pocket."

The friend says, "If I guess right, will you give me one of them?"

The first guy says, "If you guess right, I'll give you both of them."

A Mother's Secret
Authors Name Withheld

She was a beautiful young woman, just into her twenties. Happy, outgoing and extremely friendly, Kelly had no trouble making friends. She was little more than a year from completing college and her dream job would be awaiting when she finished. But now, for the first time in her life, things were in total disarray. Her boyfriend of several years had just broken off the relationship as he chose to take a job offer half way across the country. What he didn't know was that he would not only be leaving Kelly behind, but he would be leaving a daughter behind too.

Weeks before her boyfriend moved away, Kelly suspected she was pregnant, but didn't want to further disrupt things by saying anything. She knew that while she had loved her boyfriend, they would both be able to move on to independently forge happy and successful lives. After having confirmed her suspicions about being pregnant she took some time to contemplate. She had met with several doctors and finally decided it would be best to quietly end the pregnancy. A few weeks later, after having researched her options, she went in for an abortion and came out assured that she had made the right choice.

Kelly eventually got married and did in fact build a happy family. No one ever knew her secret, but it was best that way. At times she did think about the past and the daughter she almost had, but for the most part, life was good to Kelly. This afternoon, things changed.

Kelly was on her way to pick up her two teenagers from school when her car was side-swiped by a semi-trailer. No seatbelt or airbag was a match for the blunt force that likely killed her instantly. Kelly's story doesn't end here.

You see, 7 years ago Kelly had told friends and family that she had experienced something different during another mundane Sunday church service. She said for the first time she accepted what the Christian religion calls the "Gospel of Truth". Her acceptance of Jesus as her Savior and following repentance assured her that she would find herself in heaven when death came to her

Heart touching story

The passengers on the bus watched sympathetically as the attractive young woman with the white cane made her way carefully up the steps. She paid the driver and, using her hands to feel the location of the seats, walked down the aisle and found the seat he'd told her was empty. Then she's settled in, placed her briefcase on her lap and rested her cane against her leg.

It had been a year since Susan became blind. Due to a medical misdiagnosis she had been rendered sightless, and she was suddenly thrown into a world of darkness, anger, frustration and self-pity. 'How could this have happened to me?' she would plead, her heart knotted with anger. But no matter how much she cried or ranted or prayed, she knew the painful truth, her sight was never going to return. A cloud of depression hung over Susan's once optimistic spirit. All she had to cling to was her husband Mark.

Mark was an Air Force officer and he loved Susan with all his heart. When she first lost her sight, he watched her sink into despair and was determined to help his wife gain the strength she needed to become independent again.

Finally, Susan felt ready to return to her job, but how would she get there? She used to take the bus, but was now too frightened to get around the city by herself. Mark volunteered to drive her to work each day, even though they worked at opposite ends of the city. At first, this comforted Susan and fulfilled Mark's need to protect his sightless wife who was so insecure about performing the slightest task. Soon, however Mark realized that this arrangement wasn't working - it was hectic, and costly.

Susan is going to have to start taking the bus again, he admitted to himself. But just the thought of mentioning it to her made him cringe. She was still so fragile, so angry. How would she react? Just as Mark predicted, Susan was horrified at the idea of taking the bus again. "I'm blind!" she responded bitterly. "How am I supposed to know where I'm going? I feel like you're abandoning me."

A married couple are driving along a highway doing 60mph, the wife behind the wheel. Her husband suddenly looks over at her and says, "Honey, I know we've been married for 20 years, but I want a divorce."

The wife says nothing but slowly increases speed to 70 mph.

He then says, "I don't want you to try to talk me out of it, because I've been having an affair with your best friend, and she's a better lover than you are."

Again the wife stays quiet but speeds up as her anger increases.

"I want the house," he insists, pressing his luck. Again the wife speeds up, to eighty mph.

He says....

Stronger For It
Mending A Broken Heart

Heartbreak happens to all of us and can wash over us like a heavy rain. When experiencing a broken heart, our ethereal selves are saturated with grief, and the overflow is channeled into the physical body. Loss becomes a physical emptiness, and longing is transmuted into a feeling that often cannot be put into words. Mending a broken heart can seem a task so monumental that we dare not attempt it for fear of damaging ourselves further. But heartbreak, like all emotions, falls under the spell of our conscious influence.

Often the pain that wounds us most deeply also leaves the most enduring mark upon us. The shock that becomes the tender, throbbing ache of the heart eventually leads us down the path of enlightenment, blessing our lives with a new depth and richness.

Acknowledging heartbreak's impermanence by no means dulls its sting for it is the sting itself that stimulates healing. The pain is letting us know that we need to pay attention to our emotional selves, to sit with our feelings and be in them fully before we can begin to heal. It is said that time heals all wounds. Time may dull the pain of a broken heart, but it is fully feeling your pain and acknowledging it that will truly help you heal.

THAT EVENING SUN GO DOWN

William Faulkner

Monday is no different from any other week day in Jefferson now. The streets are paved now, and the telephone and the electric companies are cutting down more and more of the shade trees - the water oaks, the maples and locusts and elms - to make room for iron poles bearing clusters of bloated and ghostly and bloodless grapes, and we have a city laundry which makes the rounds on Monday morning, gathering the bundles of clothes into bright-colored, specially made motor-cars: the soiled wearing of a whole week now flees apparition-like behind alert and irritable electric horns, with a long diminishing noise of rubber and asphalt like a tearing of silk, and even the Negro women who still take in white peoples' washing after the old custom, fetch and deliver it in automobiles.

But fifteen years ago, on Monday morning the quiet, dusty, shady streets would be full of Negro women with, balanced on their steady turbaned heads, bundles of clothes tied up in sheets, almost as large as cotton bales, carried so without touch of hand between the kitchen door of the white house and the blackened wash-pot beside a cabin door in Negro Hollow.

Nancy would set her bundle on the top of her head, then upon the bundle in turn she would set the black straw sailor hat which she wore winter and summer. She was tall, with a high, sad face sunken a little where her teeth were missing. Sometimes we would go a part of the way down the lane and across the pasture with her, to watch the balanced bundle and the hat that never bobbed nor wavered, even when she walked down into the ditch and climbed out again and stooped through the fence. She would go down on her hands and knees and crawl through the gap, her head rigid, up-tilted, the bundle steady as a rock or a balloon, and rise to her feet and go on.

Sometimes the husbands of the washing women would fetch and deliver the clothes, but Jubah never did that for Nancy, even before father told him to stay away from our house, even when Dilsey was sick and Nancy would come to cook for us.