A Grade 4 teacher gave the kids in her classroom the first half of well-known proverbs and asked them to complete each one.
Here’s what they came up with (in italics):
• Don’t change horses until they stop running.
• Strike while the bug is close.
• It's always darkest before Daylight Saving Time.
• Never underestimate the power of termites.
• Don't bite the hand that looks dirty.
• You can’t teach an old dog new math.
• The pen is mightier than the pigs.
• Where there’s smoke there’s pollution.
• A penny saved is not much.
• Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you’ll have to blow your nose.
• If at first you don’t succeed, get new batteries.
Philosophy
• Money will buy a fine dog, but only kindness will make him wag his tail.
• Seat belts are not as confining as wheelchairs.
• A good time to keep your mouth shut is when you’re in deep water.
• Why does it take so little time for a child who is afraid of the dark to become a teenager who wants to stay out all night?
• Business conventions are important because they demonstrate how many people a company can operate without.
• No one has more driving ambition than the boy who wants to buy a car.
• There are no new sins. The old ones just get more publicity.
• There are worse things than getting a call for a wrong number at 4 a.m. It could be a right number.
• No one ever says, “It's only a game,” when their team is winning.
• I’ve reached the age where “happy hour” is a nap.
• Be careful reading the fine print. There’s no way you're going to like it.
• The trouble with bucket seats is that not everybody has the same size bucket.
• Do you realize that in about 40 years, we’ll have thousands of older women running around with tattoos? And, RAP music will be the golden oldies!
• Why is it that at class reunions you feel younger than everyone else looks?
Great and not so great puns
• Police were called to a day care where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.
• Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He’s all right now.
• The roundest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference.
• To write with a broken pencil is pointless.
• When fish are in schools they sometimes take debate.
• The short fortune teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
• A thief who stole a calendar got 12 months.
• A thief fell and broke his leg in wet cement. He became a hardened criminal.
• Thieves who steal corn from a garden could be charged with stalking.
• When the smog lifts in Los Angeles, U-C-L-A.
• The professor discovered that her theory of earthquakes was on shaky ground.
• The dead batteries were given out free of charge.
• If you take a laptop computer for a run, you could jog your memory.
• A dentist and a manicurist fought tooth and nail.
• Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
• A backward poet writes inverse.
• A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
• Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I’ll show you A-flat miner.
• When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she’d dye.
• Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.