Stories by Number

The story begins with a new resident to a retirement community joining the men’s social hour.

He walks in and a bunch of old men are sitting in the room. Some one would call out a number “53” and they’d all laugh. Then a few moment’s later “72” and everyone in the room would go into an uproar. Well after a few times of this “34”, “87” etc. the new resident whispers to the guy next to him “what’s going on?”

“Oh, we’ve all been here a long time and we’ve heard each other stories so many times that we one day decided to number them all.” He responds. “Now we just say the number, everyone remembers the story, and we all get a good laugh out of it.”

Well the next few numbers, “16”, “94”, “52” all get great laughs out of the room.

The new guy decides to try this. After the laughter dies down, he calls out “23”. Crickets. You could hear a pin drop.

He leans over asks his neighbor why no one laughed. And he responds, “Some people can tell ‘em, and some can’t.”

Links

Some of my Old Man’s Stories

Some of My own stories