The Brightest Hope

In the comic strip BC, a cave man stood before a rock labeled "Exchanges." He complained to the person in charge of exchanges, "My calendar watch won't budge." The other man replied, "I don't wonder. I'm not too choked up about moving into the next year myself."

Prepare To Celebrate

In 1983, Ed Woodyard decided where he wanted to spend New Year's Eve 1999. After some discussion with a reservation agent, he booked a room at a hotel which hadn't been built yet—the Marriott Marquis that would overlook Times Square in New York City. Now that's triple faith—that the day will arrive, that the hotel will be built, and that he will still be around.

Confident People

In a television interview, a highly successful businessman admitted that he is a troubled person. He said he worries little about himself, but he's afraid something dreadful—such as a nuclear holocaust, a cosmic collision, an environmental disaster, or a plague out of control—may wipe out all life as we know it.

Sin's Deadly Wages

The following story was often told by Charles Haddon Spurgeon: "A cruel king called one of his subjects into his presence and asked him his occupation. The man responded, 'I'm a blacksmith.' The ruler then ordered him to go and make a chain of a certain length.

"I Forgot"

I was relieved to find out that I'm not the only one who forgets things. Everyone does at one time or another, according to Karen Bolla, a Johns Hopkins researcher. These are the things people most often forget:

• names 83%
• where something is 60%
• telephone numbers 57%
• words 53%
• what was said 49%
• faces 42%