Couples
• Danielle Fishel, young actress in the TV series Boy Meets World, once had a jealous boyfriend while she was still in school. She had been going with her boyfriend for about three weeks, and when she was talking with a male friend named Matt whom she had not seen for a while, her boyfriend grabbed her arm and said, “What are you doing?” She explained that she was talking with a friend, and he told her, “You should not be over here talking, and all my friends want to know what my girlfriend is doing talking to another guy.” Then he tried to pull her away. She told him, “Excuse me? You can tell your friends that if they have a problem, they’re not part of our relationship. And if it’s you who has the problem, you can turn around and say bye right now because I want to talk to Matt.” That was the end of the relationship. And good riddance.
• Comedian Bob Zany once talked with a woman in the audience and learned that she had recently gotten engaged. He asked her, “When did you know he was the one?” She replied, “When the stick turned blue.”
Crime
• Bruce Simms is a barber in Congress Heights, Washington, D.C. — a tough area. One night, he was robbed in his barbershop, along with everybody else. Two men wearing ski masks came in and ordered everyone on the floor. Mr. Simms had $1,500 cash money on him — $300 in one pocket for making change, and $1,200 in another pocket in case someone came along selling a stolen big-screen TV. He threw the $1,200 behind some boxes and dropped the $300 in front of him for the robbers to pick up. The robbers got his $300, his wallet, his watch, and his rings. Later, he found out that almost immediately after leaving the barbershop the robbers shot and killed a man. After they left, his telephone rang. He answered it, and his four-year-old daughter said, “Daddy, I love you.” Mr. Simms started crying. He says, “I had almost left the shop ten minutes before those guys robbed us. If I had, I’d still have my stuff. But I would have missed out on a lesson: thingscan blind you, hold you back. This life is more than money or a watch or a few rings. I have a daughter … and she loves me. How much is that worth?” After being robbed, Mr. Simms got a new business card. It shows him kneeling in church at the altar. When people ask what his new business card is about, he replies, “It’s about gratitude.”
• Helena Rubinstein left Poland and traveled to Australia with 12 pots of facial cream that had been made by a Hungarian doctor. The Australian women liked the facial cream’s effect on Helena’s complexion, and Helena recognized a business opportunity. She became very, very rich through selling her cosmetics and through her determination — a trait that served her well throughout her life. When she was 94, some armed robbers broke into her apartment in Manhattan. She told them, “Go ahead and kill me — I am not going to let you rob me.” The armed robbers ran away.
• Rebbe Wolfe used to pray every night and revoke his right to all his possessions, saying to God that everything he owned no longer belonged to him. Why? So that if a thief should come in the night and carry away some of his “possessions,” the thief would not have violated God’s law: Thou shalt not steal.
• Rabbi Levi Isaac of Berdychev was a good man who thought the best of others. Once, the good Rabbi heard a thief boasting to other thieves about how much he had stolen, and he said, “It is still a long time to Selichot, yet the man has already began to confess his sins.”
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Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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