Past Winners

I am five feet, three inches tall and pleasingly plump. After I had a minor accident, my mother accompanied me to the emergency room.

The triage nurse asked for my height and weight, and I blurted out, "Five-foot-eight and 125 pounds."

While the nurse pondered this information, my mother leaned over to me. "Sweetheart," she gently chided, "this is not the Internet."

We had just finished tucking our five kids into bed when three-year-old Billy began to wail. Turns out, he had accidentally swallowed a penny and was sure he was going to die.

Desperate to calm him, my husband palmed a penny that he had in his pocket and pretended to pull it from Billy’s ear.

Billy was delighted. In a flash, he snatched it from my husband’s hand, swallowed it, and demanded, “Do it again!”

After a rough day spent corralling my rowdy kids, I’d had enough.

“I think I’m going to sell them,” I hissed to my sister.

“You’re crazy,” she said.

“For thinking of selling them?”

“For thinking someone would buy them.”

I can’t tell the difference between a rose and a dandelion.

So when it came time to fix up my garden, I had no clue which plants to keep and which ones to remove.

Until, that is, my mother gave me this handy tip: “Pull them all up. If it comes back, it’s a weed.”