Me: Did you know that years ago, Keith Richards had a pet frog?
Denise (laughs): No, really?
Me: Oh, yeah, and of course, Keith was known for using a lot of substances.
Denise: Sure.
Me: So Keith Richards began to treat the frog like it was a little kid. He bought it little outfits and taught it tricks and talked to it all the time. The frog eventually started to think it was human.
One day, when the frog got older, he went into a bank and asked for a mortgage to buy a house. The loan manager played along and said, “OK, but do you have a down-payment?”
At that, the frog reached into a little canvas bag and pulled out a small ceramic duck.
The loan manager said, “Look, we don’t give mortgages to frogs, and even if we did, we don’t accept ceramic ducks as down-payments.”
Well, the frog got very angry, croaking and hopping around, and the loan manager decided to humor him. She took the mortgage application and the ceramic duck into the bank manager’s office and said, “Get a load of this. There’s a frog out there who wants a mortgage on a house, and as a down-payment, he wants to use whatever this ceramic duck is.”
The bank manager took the application, and the ceramic duck, looked at them, and said, “It’s a knick-knack, Patti Wack, give the frog a loan — his old man’s a Rolling Stone.”
Denise: (stares in tolerant spouse)
(silence)
Denise: “Is this why we don’t drive into work together more often?”