Blissful Moments of Laughter by Rosina S Khan - HTML preview

-----A Heroine's Subtle Joke-----

Once upon a time, I was a fan of my favorite fiction author, Sidney Sheldon and bought every book I could find in the market. There were no facilities like today to download free fiction ebooks from the net. I was reading one of his latest books, "The Best Laid Plans" during that time and came across his heroine's most subtle joke which makes me smile and even laugh when I still recall it today. I am going to paraphrase that joke here but the theme of it is going to be the same.

The heroine tells this joke to her fellow colleagues at work in a meeting. She began," I have something to say and I am sure you are going to like it. It goes like this: Three men got hold of a ring. The first man rubbed it and a genie appeared and said, "Your wish is my command. Tell me what you desire." The first man answered, "Well, I would like to be 50% smarter." Seconds later, the man said, "Thank you. I feel great and I already feel 50% smarter!!" The genie disappeared. The second man then rubbed the ring. The genie appeared again and repeated the same words it said before. The second man said, "Well, I want to be

70% smarter." And definitely the genie carried out his order. Soon the second man said, "Hey!! I already feel 70% smarter." The genie disappeared. The third man rubbed the ring and said, "Dear genie, I want to be 100% smarter." The genie, carrying out his order, disappeared. Soon enough the third man now turned into a woman!!" Everybody at the heroine's meeting listened to her all along intently, but it left them with no comment. The heroine thought to herself, "Well, points earned!!"

As I read this excerpt from Sidney Sheldon's book, I laughed and laughed. I decided to share it with others in my real life and see what their reactions would be.

The first people I shared the joke with were my then students, me being a lecturer back at the university. As I ended telling the joke after lecture and five minutes before class break, the boys were left staring at me in awe while the girls were left giggling. Well, so I saw the reactions of my students. I also wanted to see what a guy's reaction at my level would be.

At that time, I was in constant touch with one of my male classmates abroad, and we emailed each other on a regular basis and shared everyday events. I shared the joke with him in one of my emails and asked him to tell me his thoughts and feelings about it.

"Well", he