I always share this Groucho Marx quote with people who look down on us old Turks: “Old age is something you do if you’re lucky.”
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A masscom interviewer asked me on my last birthday: “What are the advantages of being old?” I said kidnappers are not interested in you especially if you are sickly.
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Someone asked me: “How does the memory of old Turks work?” I said some oldies’ memory become selective. You know they remember those they lent money to but forget those they have borrowed money from.
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A Protestant church minister in New York has been quoted in the news media as saying: “I can’t understand what’s happening in our world today.” Yes, indeed. Today, if you say “laugh and the whole world laughs with you” the world laughs at you instead.
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Minister Johannes Kritz said what’s happening in the world today is beyond his power to comprehend. He cited instances he said he could not understand.
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“Come to think of it,” he said: “There was a big wedding in Germany ... An elephant from India was married to an elephant from Africa.” And he said the people celebrated in a big way. Big, real big.
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And there was a woman in Britain, the minister said, who divorced her husband to marry her dog. “Now I don’t know what their baby would be,” the minister said in jest.
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The minister also cited what he called a strange case of infidelity. A man, also in Britain, confessed to his wife that he had been carrying on an illicit relation with the household pet cat. Cebuanos call that iring-iring. So he decided to divorce his wife and eloped with his cat.
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Before, us Pinoys were shocked when we read in the papers that two men (both gays) got married in California. And we got more shocked when we saw the newlyweds, both bearded, kissed lips-to-lips after their wedding.
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We didn’t know then that more crazy marriages were happening in our world. The Protestant minister had reason to say he could not comprehend some of the events happening in the world today.
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Email: nitzjab@yahoo.com