Past Winners

It was my friend’s first camping trip with her husband, and they were lost. He tried all the usual tactics to determine direction—moss on the trees (there was none), direction of the sun (it was overcast), and so on. Just as she began to panic, he spotted a cabin in the distance.

"This way," he said as he led her back to their camp.

"How did you do that?" my friend asked.

"Simple. In this part of the country, the satellite dishes point south."

After an enthusiastic recommendation from my wife, I began listening to the audiobook version of Frank McCourt’s 'Teacher Man'.

“I love it, but his writing style is so disjointed,” I complained. “He refers to characters I don’t know and introduces them a half hour later.”

My wife was as confused as I was, but I soldiered on, disoriented by the jumpy story line. It wasn’t until the end of the book that my dilemma was explained—I had set the iPod to Shuffle mode.

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!"

"Hey, why are you standing in the sun?"

"I am just drying my sweat."