Three newly convicted men were being transported by bus to serve their sentences. It was a long, quiet ride, the kind where nervous thoughts filled the silence. To pass the time, the men began talking about how they planned to survive the endless hours behind bars. Each had been granted permission to bring along one personal item to help keep boredom at bay.
After a while, one man leaned over and asked, “So… what did you bring with you?”
The second man proudly opened his bag and pulled out a neatly packed box of paints and brushes. “I’m going to paint everything I can get my hands on,” he said enthusiastically. “Landscapes, portraits, abstract art—you name it. By the time I’m done, I’ll be the Grandma Moses of the jail.”
He then turned to the first man. “What about you? What did you bring?”
The first convict grinned and produced a well-worn deck of cards. He shuffled them confidently and said, “Cards. Poker, solitaire, gin rummy—any game you can think of. I’ll never be bored.”
All this time, the third man sat quietly in his seat, wearing a smug little smile and saying nothing. The other two finally noticed.
“What’s with the grin?” they asked. “What did you bring?”
Without a word, the man reached into his bag and pulled out a box of tampons, holding it up proudly.
The other two stared at him, baffled. “What on earth are you going to do with those?”
The man smiled even wider, turned the box around, and pointed to the printed instructions. “Well,” he said, “according to the box, I can go horseback riding, swimming, roller-skating….”
Later, in a different prison, a man was sent behind bars for the very first time. That night, as the cell block lights were switched off, the place fell into a tense silence. Suddenly, his cellmate walked up to the bars and shouted, “Number twelve!”
Instantly, the entire cell block erupted in laughter. Men howled, slapped the walls, and shouted with amusement. A few minutes later, someone else yelled, “Number four!” Once again, the laughter rolled through the cell block like thunder.
The new prisoner, thoroughly confused, leaned toward his cellmate and whispered, “What’s going on?”
The older inmate chuckled. “We’ve all been here so long, we know the same jokes by heart. So instead of telling the whole joke, we just call out the number.”
Eager to fit in, the new guy stepped up to the bars, cleared his throat, and confidently shouted, “Number twenty-nine!”
This time, the cell block exploded. Prisoners doubled over, fell to the floor, and laughed harder than ever before.
When the laughter finally died down, the new inmate turned to his cellmate in disbelief. “Why was that one so funny?”
The older man wiped tears from his eyes and said, “Oh… we’d never heard that one before.” 😄