To get my cousin to write to her even once, my aunt resorted to sending him a check with this note: “Do not cash until you write me a thank you.”

A few weeks later, the check had cleared, yet no message had arrived. So she called him. “I told you not to cash the check until you’d written to thank me,” she complained.

“I didn’t cash the check,” he said. “I deposited it.”

When I announced that I was getting married, my excited mother said, “You have to have the rehearsal dinner someplace opulent, where there’s dancing.”

My father, seeing where this was heading, said, “I’ll pay you a thousand dollars to elope.”

“And you have to have a breakfast, for the people who are coming from out of town.”

“Two thousand.”

“We’ll need a photographer. Oh, and what colors do you want for the reception?”

“Five thousand!”

We eloped to Spain.

My techie husband and I were walking in the high desert when he stopped to photograph one stunning vista after another.

Overcome by the sheer beauty, he paid it his ultimate compliment: "Wow... everywhere I look, I see a screen saver!"

"Where is Pearl Harbor?" I asked my fourth-grade history class. "Here’s a hint... It’s a place where everyone wants to go."

One student blurted out, "Candy Land!"