Can You Hear Me'

A man was having difficulty communicating with is wife and concluded that she was becoming hard of hearing. So he decided to conduct a test without her knowing about it.

One evening he sat in a chair on the far side of the room. Her back was to him and she could not see him. Very quietly he whispered, “Can you hear me?” There was no response.

Moving a little closer, he asked again, “Can you hear me now?” Still no reply.

Quietly he edged closer and whispered the same words, but still no answer.

Finally he moved right in behind her chair and said, “Can you hear me now?” To his surprise and chagrin she responded with irritation in her voice, “For the fourth time, yes!” What a warning to us about judging!

Our Daily Bread, June 24, 1993

Student Exercise

A teacher once asked a group of students to jot down, in thirty seconds, the initials of the people they disliked. Some of the students could think of only one person. Others listed as many as fourteen. But the interesting fact that came out of this research was that those who disliked the largest number of people were themselves the most widely disliked.

Homemade, May, 1989