I returned home from my ninth business trip of the year with a severe bout of jet lag–induced foot-in-mouth disease. As we prepared to go to sleep that night, I wrapped my arms around my better half, gave her a kiss, and announced, "It's good to be in my own bed, with my own wife!"

I got mugged by a magician. It's not funny: He took my wallet, my watch, and every silver dollar I had behind my ear.

A woman at my friend's pet shop pointed to a Labrador puppy. "I want that one," she said. "But I don't want the floor model."

Having grown up in a small Alabama town, my friend James couldn't wait to tell us all about life in California, where he was stationed.

"The malls are massive, and the restaurants are great," he said. Then he grinned. "I even went to a topless bar."

"Really?" said his mother, surprised.

"What do they do if it starts to rain?"

Marines are known for storming the beaches, not for romance. I witnessed this firsthand at the base in Twentynine Palms, California. One of the enlisted men complimented the receptionist's flowered jacket.

"It's very pretty," he said shyly.

"Thank you," she replied coyly.

"Yeah," he went on. "It looks just like my mother's sofa."

I don't know why Cupid was chosen to represent Valentine's Day. When I think about romance, the last thing on my mind is a short, chubby toddler coming at me with a weapon.

A shoe store customer liked a pair of Reeboks but wasn't completely satisfied. So she stopped an associate and asked, "Does this come in a Nike?"

The worst ad campaign ever, spotted at a Mexican fast-food restaurant: A sign behind the counter read "It's a fact tacos is brain food."

When he blew a wad of money at my blackjack table in the casino, a customer stood up and yelled, "How do you lose $200 at a $2 table?!" Before I could speak, another customer replied, "Patience."

Teacher: What is an evangelist?

Student: Someone who plays the evangelo.

Recently I sat in a restaurant watching two older men go at it. It quickly grew heated as one of them declared, "I'm so mad, I'm taking you off my pallbearer list!"

Man Plans on Cutting Cheese Saturday in Stoughton

Scene: A conversation between two of my friends.

Friend #1: Are you visiting us tomorrow? Do you need directions?

Friend #2: I'm all set. I have the address, a GPS, and a GPS override.

Friend #1: What's a GPS override?

Friend #2: My wife.

I posed this question to my thoughtful father: "If you could have any superpower in the world, what would it be?"

He replied, "Russia."

An employment website boasted that it provided training, counseling, and placement services. What's more, "many services are available in Spanish, and we arrange interrupters."

A patient at the dental office where I work stopped by my desk to pay her bill. She began rummaging through her purse, as so many patients do when they have a check to write. "Do you need a pen?" I asked, offering her mine.

"Yes, thank you," she replied. She took it, put it in her handbag, and proceeded to pay in cash.

Teacher: Why can't freshwater fish live in salt water?

Student: The salt would give them high blood pressure.

Teacher: Mira went to the library at 5:15 and left at 6:45. How long was Mira at the library?

Student: Not long.

After someone stole my brown-bag lunch at work, I complained about it to my wife, who offered to make me something wonderful the next day. But as I pulled into the plant's parking lot, I noticed a guy clearly down on his luck, so I gave him my lunch. I didn't know there was a note from my wife in the bag: "I know who you are, and I know where you live!"

Playing around with my new iTouch, I decided to get directions to my son's base from my home in Maryland. So I typed "Wahiawa, Hawaii." I got turn-by-turn directions until I hit the coast. Then I was told, "Kayak across the Pacific Ocean entering Hawaii."

Before leaving for Officer Candidates School, I half-jokingly mentioned to my family that I was going to learn how to eat, sleep, shower, and shave all over again. My brother, in the throes of planning his wedding, muttered, "Me too."

My nine-year-old daughter walked in while I was getting ready for work. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"Putting on my wrinkle cream," I answered.

"Oh," she said, walking away. "I thought they were natural."

NY Plans Nation's Biggest Butt Tax

Newspaper Questions Man Executed in 1983 Slaying

Overheard at the dinosaur exhibit in Disney's Animal Kingdom park: a confused woman complaining to her friend, "How could they possibly know the names of all those dinosaurs if they died 75 million years ago? And another thing, how do we even know they were called dinosaurs?"

During a visit to our friend's home in Canada, we were feted with a wonderful breakfast. But my six-year-old daughter was not impressed.

"Your pancakes are smaller than my mom's," she told him.

He replied, "That's because of the exchange rate."

I turned to my father one night and said, "It's amazing—50 years and you never once had an affair. How do you account for that?" He replied, "I can't drive."

My friend is a Botox junkie—she can't stop getting the injections. But surprisingly, when I reminded her to get her flu shot, she shuddered. "I hate needles," she said. I had a solution: "Just pretend it will make your arm look younger."

Interested in what's happening in the news? No need to read the whole story. Here are the headlines: "Cops Use Stun Gun Twice on Unarmed Amputee"

The quirky to-do list in a library book. A bizarre snapshot lying on the sidewalk. The dry cleaning ticket on an empty bus seat that has a cartoon on the back. They're the anonymous, scribbled flotsam of everyday experience that washes up in everyone's life from time to time. Most of us might pick them up, take a look, and then cast them aside. Others—around 200 a week—share them with the world by sending them to Davy Rothbart, who publishes Found, a magazine devoted exclusively to such treasures. Like Walt Whitman, Rothbart, 34, hears America singing. "There is honesty, beauty, and poetry in life," he says. "A CEO may not write the same way as a homeless man, but the emotions are the same."

Rothbart, who sports a shaved head and a pencil-thin chin-strap beard and closes all conversations with "Peace," is refreshingly low-key and sincere, a classic nice guy from the Midwest. "My mom calls the magazine ‘people-watching on paper,'" he says. It began in the winter of 2000. Rothbart had been bouncing around, working as, among other things, a ticket scalper and a creative writing teacher at a prison. Then one morning in Chicago, he went out to his car and found a napkin jammed under the windshield wiper with this written on it:

Mario—
I [redacted] hate you. You said you had to work then whys your car here at HER place?? You're a [redacted] LIAR. I hate you. I [redacted] hate you
Amber
PS Page me later

He didn't know Mario or Amber but was transfixed. "She was so angry but still hopeful," Rothbart says. "To me, it said ‘I still want to be with you—I'm just kind of freaking out right now.' We've all been there." He showed the note to friends. And they, in turn, showed him stuff they had found. "All my friends had some prize on their fridge. It seemed a shame that only people who had access to their kitchens would see that stuff." Rothbart decided to publish other people's garbage for all to enjoy. Today, Found is a cottage industry, with an annual magazine, best-of books, and a popular website, foundmagazine.com.

As the items poured in, Rothbart often found himself surprised, especially by the amount of X-rated material. "I was shocked that so many people were taking pictures of their private parts," he says. "And then losing them." But his favorite submissions are the cryptic ones. "They spike the imagination," he says. "In TV and movies, we encounter tidy resolutions. Found is real life, where things aren't wrapped up so tidily.

"Every third day, I'll have a new favorite," Rothbart says. "We got this one from a kid in Pennsylvania writing to his dad in Arizona. He's all enthused: ‘Dad, I'm going to move down there with you. We're going to have a great time.' It's actually quite long and brimming with joy and hope. But then at the end, he's like, ‘Dad, how come I never hear back from you? If you need a calling card or stamps, I'll send them.' And you realize what this kid doesn't—that if his dad wanted to get hold of him, he would. It's just crushing and beautiful."

Luckily, there are also these sorts of notes, this one from a professor to a student, discovered on a college campus:
I have not graded your test yet, but it is clear that my message to you about receiving the grade you earn has not gotten through. To write as you do, "Please have mercy on my soul and give me a passing grade," indicated that, as do your numerous pleas for mercy earlier … Please stop the undignified pleading.

Strangers occasionally step forward to claim authorship of an item Rothbart has published. "They're never really angry, just confused," he says. "‘Where did you get this?' they'll ask. ‘What's so interesting about my love life?' They don't see it." Sadly, Mario and Amber remain at large in the universe. "I keep hoping one day one of them contacts me and gives me the aftermath. Was it resolved? Did they get married or never see each other again? I guess I'll never know. But hey, that's life."

Today, while playing "20 Questions" with my friend, I asked, "Monsters or aliens?" She gave it some thought, then responded, "Well, I've never actually met a monster, so I'm going to have to go with aliens."

Years of smoking finally caught up with my friend John one morning when he keeled over at work, clutching his heart. He was rushed to a hospital and peppered with questions.

"Do you smoke?" asked a paramedic.

"No," John whispered. "I quit."

"That"s good. When did you quit?"

"Around 9:30 this morning."

During Sunday school, the substitute teacher asked my four-year-old what his name was. "Spider-Man," said my son.

"No, I mean your real name," pressed the teacher.

My son apologized. "Oh, I"m sorry. It"s Peter Parker."

"As another year rolls in," read an ad in our paper, "we"d like to offer our best wishes to all of you who have given us reason to celebrate." It was signed "Gunter"s Funeral Homes."

After examining the paltry tips left by a church group, our waitress was not pleased. Looking toward my table, she grumbled, "These people come in with the Ten Commandments and a ten-dollar bill, and they don"t break any of them!"

1. Petty Theft
Football players at the high school where I worked were stealing the practice jerseys, so the coach ordered a set with "Property of Central High School" emblazoned on them. When the thefts continued, he ordered a new batch that had the imprint "Stolen from Central High School." But the jerseys still kept disappearing. The larceny finally stopped after he changed the wording to "Central High School 4th String."
-- Hal Olsen

2. Sports and Poetry
The college football player knew his way around the locker room better than he did the library. So when my husband's co-worker saw the gridiron star roaming the stacks looking confused, she asked how she could help.

"I have to read a play by Shakespeare," he said.

"Which one?" she asked.

He scanned the shelves and answered, "William."
-- Sandra J. Yarbrough

3. Praying for Overtime
My husband, a big-time sports fan, was watching a football game with our grandchildren. He had just turned 75 and was feeling a little wistful. "You know," he said to our grandson, Nick, "it's not easy getting old. I guess I'm in the fourth quarter now."

"Don't worry, Grandpa," Nick said cheerily. "Maybe you'll go into overtime."
-- Evelyn Bredleau

4. Calling the Coach
As a high school football coach, I'm aware that student athletes tend to focus too much on sports. A fellow coach, Bob, was talking about one such player, who called him at home one night. When his wife informed the kid that Bob wasn't home, he became frantic and said he had to speak to the coach right away. "Just calm down, and I'll have him call you as soon as he gets home," the coach's wife told him. "What's your number?"

The flustered kid replied, "Three.
-- Allan Floyd

5. Football Makes Sense
A guy took his blonde girlfriend to her first football game. They had great seats right behind their team's bench. After the game, he asked her how she liked the experience.

"Oh, I really liked it," she replied, "especially the tight pants and all the big muscles, but I just couldn't understand why they were killing each other over 25 cents."

Dumbfounded, her date asked, "What do you mean?"

"Well, they flipped a coin. One team got it, and then for the rest of the game, all they kept screaming was, 'Get the quarter back! Get the quarter back!' I'm like, Hello-o-o? It's only 25 cents!"
-- Melissa Jones

6. Mum's the Word
My neighbor, Terry, a former high-school halfback, came home from combat duty in Afghanistan. He was excited to tell me that his unit had played a makeshift game of football. "Just don't tell my mom," he begged. "If she knew I was playing football she'd worry that I might reinjure my knee."
-- Mike Callison

7. Unconscious
Standing on the sidelines, during a game being played by my school's football team, I saw one of the players take a hard hit. He tumbled to the ground and didn't move.

We grabbed our first-aid gear and rushed out onto the field. The coach picked up the young man's hand and urged, "Son, can you hear me? Squeeze once for yes and twice for no."
-- Richard Corbin

8. Win or Lose
Driving home dejected from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after a Mississippi-Louisiana State college football game that Ole Miss had lost 24-0, I was ignoring the speed limit and, sure enough, a Louisiana patrolman flagged me down. "You've got me, Officer," I confessed as I handed him my license. "I was speeding."

The officer confirmed that I was clocked at 72 m.p.h. But as he spoke, I noticed him stealing a peek at my game program and a pair of binoculars on the passenger seat. "Were you down for the big game?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," I replied. The officer then paused for what seemed like an eternity.

"Well," he said finally, "I guess you've suffered enough."

I couldn't believe my good fortune. But as my license was handed back to me, I felt compelled to ask a question. "Officer," I said, "what if Ole Miss had won?"

"I'd have locked you up in a heartbeat," came his reply. "Now keep it under 60!"
-- John C. Bonner

9. Being a Good Sport
Halfway through dinner one night, our friend Jim told us of his days playing football in college as a defensive lineman.

"Did you play sports in college, Mike?" his wife then asked me.

"Yes," I answered.

"I was on West Point's shooting team."

"That's great," she said, appropriately impressed. "Offense or defense?"
-- Mike Maloney

10. Introductions
The night before she was to attend a celebrity golf tournament, my friend Irene went to a party in honor of the event. Several of the famous athletes who were playing in the tournament were at the door greeting guests. Among them was Joe Montana, the pro football Hall of Fame quarterback and Super Bowl winner. Shaking my friend's hand, he said, "Hi! Joe Montana."

She didn't know Joe Montana from Joe Six-Pack, so in all sincerity she extended her hand and said, "Irene. Minnesota."
-- Roger Lee

11. Separation
As a Catholic, I'm partial to Notre Dame football. As a former Michigan resident, though, I also keep tabs on Michigan college teams. One Saturday afternoon, a neighbor dropped in while I was watching Notre Dame vs. Michigan State. "Which team do you want to win?" he asked.

"Gee, I don't know," I replied. "I'm kind of torn between Church and State."
-- Robert A. Kozma

12. Teammates
Our high school has lots of spirit, but that didn't help the football team, who had yet to win a game. So when our principal saw some cheerleaders sitting in the stands, he asked, "Don't you think you girls should be down there cheering for your team?" "I think," one of them said, "we should be down there playing for our team."
-- Emily Karnes, Pueblo, Colo.

13. Number 1
At five-ten and 114 pounds, our son, Dan, is the skinniest player on his high school football team. During one of his games, I remarked to a cousin, "I wonder why they gave him the uniform with the number 1 on it."

"It's probably the only one that fit," she said.
-- Diane Feldman, Litchfield, Neb.

14. Finding Tickets
A buddy of mine, Mike, had season tickets to the Detroit Lions football games. Last year they had such a miserable record that he couldn't give away two tickets to a game he wasn't able to attend. While parking at a mall, he decided to leave the tickets under his windshield wiper. "And that worked?" I asked.

"Not exactly," said Mike. "I returned to find six more tickets to the same game."
-- Joseph L. Fromm

15. Game Day Surgery
On a Saturday afternoon when football fever was running high in South Bend, Indiana, a Notre Dame student was brought into the hospital where I was on duty as a nurse. He had acute appendicitis, and as I prepared him for surgery I asked if he wasn't terribly disappointed to miss the big game.

"Oh, I won't miss it," he said. "Doc is giving me a spinal anesthetic so I can listen to it during the operation!"
-- Rita Hamilton

Our favorite museum in town displays quilts from around the country. When I visited recently, I asked the woman at the front desk about a senior discount. It wasn't to be.

"Sir," she said, "this is a quilt museum. We give discounts to teenagers."

A friend had a waitressing position open at his diner and asked job seekers to fill out an application. Under "Salary Expected," a woman wrote "Friday."

Q Who’s the patron saint of e-mail?

A: St. Francis of a CC.

Three dolts are in the forest when they spot a set of tracks.

Dolt No. 1 says, "Hey, deer tracks!"

Dolt No. 2 says, "No, dog tracks!"

Dolt No. 3 says, "You’re both crazy—they’re cow tracks!"

They were still arguing when the train hit them.

Why was the opera singer arrested? He got into treble.

What do you call a pig that does karate?

A pork chop.

One day at a local café, a woman suddenly called out, "My daughter’s choking! She swallowed a nickel! Please, anyone, help!"

Immediately a man at a nearby table rushed up to her and said he was experienced in these situations. He calmly stepped over to the girl, then with no look of concern, wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. Out popped the nickel.

The man returned to his table as if nothing had happened.

"Thank you!" the mother cried. "Tell me, are you a doctor?"

"No," the man replied. "I work for the IRS."

Just as I began my Christmas Eve service, the electricity in the church failed. The ushers and I found some candles and placed them around the sanctuary. Then I reentered the pulpit, shuffled my notes, and muttered, "Now, where was I?" A tired voice called out, "Right near the end!"

From a newspaper in Royal Leamington Spa, England: "The Crown Inn. Why not celebrate Christmas with us? Open every day except Christmas and Boxing Day."

A dull-witted king is losing a territorial dispute with a neighboring monarch. As the fight wears on, he gets more and more frustrated until finally he roars, "Where are my two court jesters?"

In seconds, two jesters appear at his side.

"Okay, let’s continue," he says, "now that I have my wits about me."

For her 40th birthday, my wife said, "I'd love to be ten again." So that Saturday, we had a heaping stack of chocolate-chip pancakes, her favorite childhood breakfast. Then we hit the playground and a merry-go-round. We finished the day with a banana split.

"So how did you enjoy being a kid for a day?" I asked.

"Great," she said. "But when I said I wanted to be ten again, I meant my dress size."

Three men die on Christmas Eve and go to heaven, where they're met by Saint Peter. "In order to get in," he tells them, "you must each produce something representative of the holidays." The first man digs into his pockets and pulls out a match and lights it. "This represents a candle of hope." Impressed, Peter lets him in. The second man pulls out a tangle of keys and shakes them. "These are bells." He's allowed in too. "So," Peter says to the third man, "what do you have?" The third man proudly shows him a pair of red panties. "What do these have to do with Christmas?" asks Peter. "They're Carol's."

Like any mother, I worried when my son joined the Marines. But later on, when I asked him how things were going, he put my mind at ease.

"Let me put it this way, Mom," he said. "Living with you prepared me for boot camp."

The highlight of our zoo trip was a peacock showing off its plumage. My four-year-old son was particularly taken with it. That evening, he couldn't wait to tell his father: "Dad, guess what! I saw a Christmas tree come out of a chicken!"

As he trained troops at Fort Dix, New Jersey, my brother-in-law noticed that one medic was hopeless on the firing range.

"You better learn how to fire your weapon," he told her. "All soldiers have to qualify on the range before we can send them to Iraq."

The medic was relieved. "Then it's okay," she said. "I'm not going to Iraq. I'm going to Baghdad."

While I was working security at a football game, a fan spilled beer on a cheerleader's pop-poms. As a favor, I rinsed them off in the men's room. As I shook off the water, someone came out of a stall. Stunned, he announced, "That's the first time anyone's cheered me on while going to the bathroom."

Tour guides get bored spewing the same facts everyday. So these Philadelphia guides rewrote history.

"Trees were planted along streets so illiterate people would know the names of the streets. So Pine Street was lined with pines, etc."

"The reason the kitchens were in the basement is because the long, flowing dresses of women would catch fire and they could run directly into the streets, instead of through the house, spreading fire."

"The Lincoln statue in Fairmont Park shows him signing the Declaration of Independence."

Driving in Ohio, we spotted a sign that said "Wildlife Refuge." Seeing a dead deer lying in front of it, my husband shook his head.

"He almost made it."

For 98 percent of the students at the school where my wife teaches, English is a second language. But that didn't stop them from giving her Christmas cards. Still, their enthusiasm for the occasion sometimes exceeded their grasp of English. Among the many cards that flooded her desk were: "Happy Birthday, Grandma," "Get Well Soon," and "Congratulations on Passing Your Driving Test!"

We were eating at one of the trendier restaurants in town when my friend pointed to the menu and told the waitress, "I'll have the 24."

"Uh, Jim," I whispered, "that's the price, not the meal number."

"Oh," he said. "Then give me the 12."

On a nighttime visit to his brother’s base, my son Joe was impressed by the large airplane hangar in which Billy worked. But when Billy led him through another door, Joe was absolutely astounded by the massive, darkened room.

"This is the largest building I’ve ever been in!" he said. "What do you call it?"

His brother answered, "The outside."

My friend is a procrastinator. He’s afraid of Saturday the 14th.

I can’t cook. I use a smoke alarm as a timer.

Three buildings in town were overrun by squirrels—the town hall, the hardware store, and the church. The town hall brought in some cats. But after they tore up all the files, the mayor got rid of the predators, and soon the squirrels were back. The hardware store humanely trapped the squirrels and set them free outside town. But three days later, the squirrels climbed back in. Only the church came up with an effective solution. They baptized the squirrels and made them members. Now they see them only on Christmas and Easter.

I love playing Santa at the mall. But parents often have trouble getting young children to sit on my knee. It took a lot of coaxing for one little girl to perch there, so I got straight to the point. "What do you want most of all for Christmas?" I asked.

She answered, "Down!"

When the Air Force deployed me overseas, my daughter’s friend asked her where I was headed.

"Guantánamo Bay," my daughter said.

"Oh, my God!" her friend shrieked. "What did he do?"

For Christmas, I gave my kid a BB gun. He gave me a sweater with a bull’s-eye on the back.

Marry an orphan: You’ll never have to spend boring holidays with the in-laws.

A woman goes to the post office and asks for 50 Hanukkah stamps.

"What denomination?" asks the clerk.

The woman says, "Six Orthodox, 12 Conservative, and 32 Reform."

A job interviewer asked me where I wanted to be in five years. I said, "Ideally, suspended with pay."

After giving birth, I quit my job. The exit questionnaire asked, "What steps would have prevented you from leaving?" My answer: "Birth control."

A man is on trial for armed robbery. The jury comes back with the verdict. The foreman stands, clears his throat, and announces, "Not guilty."

The defendant leaps to his feet. "Awesome!" he shouts. "Does that mean I get to keep the money?"

Adam bit the apple and, feeling great shame, covered himself with a fig leaf. Eve, too, felt shame and covered herself with a fig leaf. Then she went behind the bush to try on a maple leaf, a sycamore, and an oak.

I’ve never understood the concept of the gift certificate, because for the same 50 bucks, my friend could’ve gotten me 50 bucks.