Exit Line

It was unusually quiet at the breakfast joint this morning. The waitress figured it was because people were making breakfast in bed for the mothers in their lives—it's Mother's Day in the United States—but that a lot of people would be taking mom out for breakfast later. "About nine o' clock," she said, and snapped her fingers. "This is the calm before the storm."

"That's the only kind of calm," I sighed, "that I've ever known." An exaggeration, of course, but only a slight one.