فصل 02

Chapter two

Accidents

Falling into Bed

Last autumn an Englishman went to the United States for a month and visited all the important places in his guidebook. In the fourth week he went to New York for three days and on the last day of his holiday he looked in the guidebook for the last time. ‘

Oh, I must visit the Empire State Building. it’s famous. I’ll go up to the top floor - you can see all the city from there. that’ll be good!’

The weather was cold and it was very windy but he walked up. and up. and up. He arrived at the top and looked down at the street below - the cars and people were very small.

Suddenly there was a strong wind and he fell off the building. The people in the street stopped and watched. he fell fast. But when he was only a hundred metres from the street, a big car came round the corner with a bed on top of it. He hit the bed, not the road. Lucky man!

The Flying Cow

One afternoon a famous television news-reader drove very fast in his open-topped car along a big road. Suddenly there was a strange noise. THUD! ‘What’s that?’ he thought. He stopped, turned round and looked - there was a cow in the back! It was dead.

‘I must get it out of here,’ he thought. ‘A dead cow isn’t good for my nice clean car.’ But the cow was very heavy and he couldn’t move it.

So he drove to the nearest town and looked for a garage. He wanted the people in the garage to help with moving the cow. But before he arrived at the garage he stopped at a bar for a drink. When he went into the bar the people said, ‘Oh look, it’s the famous news-reader on TV Why is he here?’ Then he told them about the cow from the sky.

‘Never! It can’t be! Is it a story for TV?’ the man behind the bar asked.

‘No, it happened only twenty minutes ago,’ the news-reader said.

A man in the corner of the bar started to laugh. ‘Twenty minutes ago I drove across a bridge over the big road,’ he said. ‘There were some cows in the road. I hit a very big cow. It fell off the bridge on to the road below.

I stopped and looked for it but I couldn’t find it. Now I know: it fell into your car and you drove away with it!’

Look Before You Jump

Some years ago Peter, a young man from a small town, wanted a motorbike. At Christmas he asked for a motorbike but no luck. He finished school in July and hoped for a motorbike then, but no luck. For his birthday in September he asked again - and at last he was lucky! Peter’s father gave him a big red motorbike and he was very, very happy.

On his birthday, his father said, ‘You must have some lessons, Peter. You must learn to ride the motorbike well.’

Peter had a very good teacher, Mr Fletcher, and he was a fast learner. Mr Fletcher was happy with his student and one day they stood on the street in the centre of town. ‘Today you must learn to stop quickly.

Please ride out of town and then come back along this street. I’ll suddenly jump out in front of you and say ‘Stop!’ Stop as quickly as you can. Do you understand?’

‘Er. yes, I do,’ Peter answered. Then he rode away down the street. Ten minutes later he came back round the corner into the same street. He looked for Mr Fletcher but couldn’t see him.

‘That’s strange,’ he thought. ‘When is he going to jump out and say “Stop!’’?’

He rode along and watched carefully but Mr Fletcher wasn’t there. Then Peter saw a man on the street under a big red motorbike - a young man stood by him. Peter stopped, parked his bike and ran over. ‘Oh, no!’ he said. ‘That’s Mr Fletcher!’ He turned to the two men and asked, ‘What happened?’

Mr Fletcher slowly sat up and answered, ‘I jumped out in front of the wrong motorbike!’

Don’t Lose Your Teeth

Some old men, all of them more than 75 years old, went fishing in their boat one sunny morning. At first the sea was quiet and they caught fish easily - each of them got four or five small fish. They talked and laughed a lot and remembered the old days.

Suddenly Bill looked at the sky and said, ‘It’s quite dark over there.’ They all looked up at the sky. ‘And there’s a strong wind now. we must be careful.’ The sea was dark, too, and the boat moved up and down in the wind. They stopped fishing and turned on the radio so they could hear about the weather - it was bad news.

The wind was stronger and stronger and the boat moved more and more. The men stopped talking and watched the sky. Then Bill was ill and lost his breakfast into the water - and his false teeth went in, too! ‘Oh, no!’ he said. ‘My teeth went into the water too! What can I do?’

‘Bad luck! But you can’t do much about it,’ his friend, Fred, answered, ‘Perhaps a fish will swallow them.’ And he laughed.

Later, when the sea was quieter, the men started fishing again. After ten minutes Fred caught a very big fish. ‘Look at this!’ he said to his friends. ‘It’s quite heavy - six kilos or more.’ He cut the fish open, took out his false teeth and put them inside the fish.

Then Fred gave the fish to Bill and said, ‘Hey, look! Here are your teeth, Bill - this fish swallowed them.’

Bill took the teeth out of the fish and put them into his mouth. Then he took them out again, smiled at Fred and said, ‘No, they aren’t my teeth - they’re too big.’ And he threw the teeth into the sea.

Never Leave Your Name

One Saturday afternoon an old woman, Mrs Roberts, sat in the park in the centre of town and talked to her friend, Mrs Jones. They watched the people and talked about life in the town.

There were a lot of cars on the road and one young man parked his new red car near the two women and went off to the shops. After five minutes a big black taxi came fast round the corner of the street and - CRASH! - it hit the red car.

‘Oh, no! Look at that young man’s car!’ Mrs Roberts said to her friend.

‘Yes, it’s not too good,’ Mrs Jones answered.

The taxi driver stopped and got out. He looked carefully at the red car and thought: ‘I’ll leave a letter on the front window. now, let me think.’ Then he looked round and saw the two women in the park.

He walked across to them and asked for some paper and a pen. I want to write a letter about the accident and leave my name and phone number,’ he said. He then wrote something on the paper and left it on the front window of the red car. After that he got into his taxi and drove away.

Ten minutes later the driver of the red car came back from the shops. He looked at his car and was very angry. Then he took the letter read it and got angrier.

Mrs Roberts walked over to him. ‘What’s the problem?’ she asked. ‘I saw the taxi driver - he wrote his name and phone number on the paper.’

So the angry young man showed her the taxi driver’s letter. It said: ‘Everybody thinks my name is on this paper but it isn’t!’