MID-WEEK HUMOR

      We return today with our mid-week humor page on Wednesdays with humorous passages, jokes and vignettes sent to us by readers to share with all...

      In a certain suburban neighborhood, there were two brothers, 8 and 10 years old, who were exceedingly mischievous. Whenever something went wrong in the neighborhood, it turned out they had a hand in it.

      Their parents were at their wits' end trying to control them. Hearing about a priest nearby who worked with delinquent boys, the mother suggested to her husband that they ask the good father to talk with the boys. The boys' dad concurred.

      The mother went to the priest and made her request. He agreed, but said he wanted to see the younger boy first and alone. So the mother sent him to the good padre. Father sat the boy down on the other side of his huge, impressive desk. For about five minutes they just sat and stared at each other. Finally, the priest pointed his forefinger at the boy and asked, "Where is God?" The boy looked under the desk, in the corners of the room, all around, but said nothing. Again, louder, the priest pointed at the boy and asked, "Where is God, my son?" Again the boy looked all around but said nothing. A third time, in a louder, firmer voice, the priest leaned far across the desk and put his forefinger almost to the boy's nose, and asked "Oh, for the love of God! Where is God?" The boy panicked and ran all the way home.

      Finding his older brother, he dragged him upstairs to their room and into the closet, where they usually plotted their mischief. He finally said, "We are in B-I-I-I-I-G trouble now!" The older boy asked, "What do you mean, B-I-I-I-I-G trouble?" His brother replied, "God is missing and they think we did it."

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With friends like these who needs enemies department of true shorts:

A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen, shaking frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist towards the electric skillet. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current she whacked him with a handy plank of wood by the back door, breaking his arm in two places. Until that moment he had been happily listening to his Walkman.

Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn. Suddenly the pigs, all two thousand of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded, trampling the two hapless protesters to death.

And the capper...:

Iraqi terrorist, Khay Rahnajet, didn't pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with "return to sender" stamped on it. Forgetting it was the bomb, he opened it and was blown to bits.

      One dark night outside a small town, a fire started inside the local chemical plant. Before long it exploded into flames and an alarm went out to fire departments from miles around. After fighting the fire for over an hour, the chemical company president approached the fire chief and said, "All of our secret formulas are in the vault in the center of the plant. They must be saved! I will give $50,000 to the engine company that brings them out safely!"

      As soon as the chief heard this, he ordered the firemen to strengthen their attack on the blaze. After two more hours of attacking the fire, the president of the company offered $100,000 to the engine company that could bring out the company's secret files. From the distance a long siren was heard and another fire truck came into sight. It was a local volunteer fire company composed entirely of men over 65.

      To everyone's amazement the little fire engine raced through the chemical plant gates and drove straight into the middle of the inferno. In the distance the other firemen watched as the old timers hopped off of their rig and began to fight the fire with an effort that they had never seen before. After an hour of intense fighting the volunteer company had extinguished the fire and saved the secret formulas.

      Joyous, the chemical company president announced that he would double the reward to $200,000 and walked over to personally thank each of the volunteers. After thanking each of the old men individually, the president asked the group what they intended to do with the reward money. The fire truck driver looked him right in the eye and said, "The first thing we're going to do is fix the dang brakes on that truck!"