Have you ever wondered?

Why does the garbage always weigh more than the groceries?

What is it about stop signs that causes people to want to pick their noses?

Why do they have to yell during car commercials?

If most people are right-handed, why is the flush lever of a toilet on the left?

If I photocopied a mirror, would I have an extra photocopy machine?

How bad are the TV shows that the networks rejected?

How many husbands would starve to death if it were not for sandwiches?

How is it that when I go into the front door of the church, I’m still at the back of the church?

Why can’t I ever sneeze just once?

Why are the people who work in a health food store crankier than the folks who work in a bakery?

Why we talk about business on the golf course and talk about golf in the office?

Why we move from the farm to the city so we can make enough money to be able to move back

to the farm?

Why we have speed limit laws, but buy cars that will double that speed?

Why we complain about the government being unable to balance the budget when we are unable to

balance our own?

What makes the airport security folks think that they could find something in my wife’s purse

when she can’t?

Why don’t all small appliances have something to wrap the electrical cord around?

You may be getting older if

You have ever made a slingshot out of an old inner tube.

You have trouble thinking of things worth waiting in line for.

Your former classmates have become so gray, wrinkled and blind that they don’t even recognize you.

You ever tried to make a Slinky out of baling wire.

You find the scariest part of seeing a horror movie in a theater is the price you have to pay for popcorn, candy and soft drinks.

You are not worried about your bones getting softer because that fact is offset by your arteries hardening.

You remember when a pie was placed on the windowsill to cool, not to thaw.

You ever made an ash tray in school.

You have to pass the salt and pepper separately.

You know your way around, but don’t feel like going.

You have stopped lying about your age and have begun bragging about it.

You have gotten over the hill without reaching the top.

All your children have joined AARP.

The best part of your day ends once the alarm clock goes off.

You remember when you used to hear a car horn honk and it meant that someone you knew

wanted to get your attention.

You traded your &uot;Buns of Steel&uot; videotape for one called &uot;Buns of Pudding.&uot;

You try not to let aging get you down.

It’s too hard to get back up.

You are still the life of the party &045; at least until 8 p.m.

Whenever you stretch to take out the kinks, you make a new one.

I wish

When I was a boy, I would anxiously await the arrival each year of catalogs from Montgomery

Ward and J.C. Penney.

These catalogs were known as &uot;wish books&uot; because most of us would look at the things in the catalog and wish for a lot of them.

Usually, wishing for them was as close as we came to actually having them.

I do not get either of those catalogs today, but I still wish for things.

I wish that there was a toothpaste that wouldn’t ruin the taste of any orange juice I might drink shortly after brushing my teeth. I wish there was a toilet paper roll that would beep when the roll became empty so no one has to be surprised at a difficult time by an empty roll.

I wish there was a device that would lock loud music inside an automobile.

This device would make it impossible for ear-piercing music to escape through a window no matter how high the volume is turned up.

I read a newspaper article a while back that stated that a lot of people only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials.

If this is true, we need something that we could hook up to a TV set that would zap the programming and just show the commercials.

These are million dollar ideas, but I would be willing to let any of them go for a little less than that.

Make me an offer.

(Hartland resident Al Batt’s column appears Wednesday and Sunday in the Albert Lea Tribune.)