You can pretend to be serious, you can't pretend to be witty.

-- Sacha Guitry

Here's a story to get us going today.

It's that time of the year and it seems a mother was sick with the flu. Her little girl wanted to be a good nurse, so she fluffed the pillows and brought a magazine for her mother to read. Then she showed up with a cup of tea.

"You're such a sweetheart," the mother said as she drank. "I didn't know you could make tea."

"Oh, yes," the little girl replied. "I put the tea leaves in the water like you do, and I boiled it, and then I strained it into a cup. But I couldn't find a strainer, so I used the flyswatter."

"You what!" the mother sputtered.

"Oh, don't worry, Mom," the little girl said, "I didn't use the new flyswatter. I used the old one."

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SPEAKING OF KIDS: My young teenager is always complaining about the number of tests that they have to take these days.

"The world is full of questions, son," I told him, reaching for a list sent in by Bill Wood .

"How would you answer these?"

- If people from Poland are called Poles, why aren't people from Holland called Holes?

- Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

- If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

- Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?

- When cheese gets its picture taken, what does it say?

- Why aren't a wise man and a wise guy the same thing?

- Why isn't the number 11 pronounced onety one?

- "I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?

- If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked and dry cleaners depressed?

- What hair color do they put on the driver's licenses of bald men?

- If four out of five people suffer from diarrhea, does that mean that one out of five enjoys it?

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TODAY'S JOKE: Here's one from Everett Fernandez .

An elderly woman died and, having never married, requested no male pallbearers.

In her handwritten instructions for her memorial service, she wrote: "They wouldn't take me out while I was alive; I don't want them to take me out when I'm dead."