Whatever jokes

You don't know what time Taco Bell closes anymore.

Your potted plants stay alive.

Shacking in a twin-sized bed seems absurd.

You keep more food than beer in the fridge.

You have to pay your own credit card bill.

You haven't seen a soap opera in over a year.

8:00 a.m. is not early.

You have to file your own taxes.

You hear your favorite song on the elevator at work.

You're not carded anymore.

You carry an umbrella.

Your friends marry and divorce instead of hook-up and break-up.

You start watching the Weather Channel.

Jeans and baseball caps aren't staples in your wardrobe.

You can no longer take shots, and smoking gives you a sinus attack.

You go from 130 days of vacation time to 7.

You go to parties that the police don't raid.

Adults feel comfortable telling jokes about sex in front of you.

Your car insurance goes down, except when you move to Jersey.

You refer to college students as kids.

You drink wine, scotch and martinis instead of beer, bourbon, and rum. Well, some of us still drink rum.

You feed your dog Science Diet instead of Taco Bell.

You're waking up at 6 a.m. instead of going to bed.

College sweatshirts are 'casual' instead of dress up.

Sleeping on the couch is a no-no.

Naps are no longer available between noon and 6 p.m.

Dinner and a movie — the whole date instead of the beginning of one.

You get your news from sources other than USA Today, ESPN Sportscenter, and MTV News.

METABOLISM SLOWDOWN

Wine appreciation expands beyond Boone's and Mad Dog.

You actually eat breakfast foods at breakfast time.

Grocery lists actually contain relatively healthy food.

When drinking, you say at least once per night, "I just can't put it down like I used to."

Golf is beginning to seem a lot less silly.

You decide your parents weren't as dumb as you thought!

The first bat comes home one night and has blood dripping off his fangs. The other two bats are amazed and asked how much blood he had drunk.

The first bat said, "See that castle over there? I drank the blood of three people." The second bat goes out on his night and comes back with blood around his mouth. The other two bats are astonished and ask how many people's blood had he drunk. The bat said, "See that castle over there. I drank the blood of five people."

The third bat goes out on his night and comes back covered in blood. This was totally amazing to the other two bats. They ask how much blood he drank. The 3rd bat said, "See that castle over there?" and the other bats nod. "Well," says the third bat, "I didn't."

The Buddhist explanation: If a character has lived rightly, and its karma is good, then after it has been deleted it will be reincarnated as a different, higher character. Those funny characters above the numbers on your keyboard will become numbers, numbers will become letters, and lower-case letters will become upper-case.

The 20th-century bitter cynical nihilist explanation: Who cares? It doesn't really matter if they're on the page, deleted, undeleted, underlined, etc. It's all the same.

The Mac user's explanation: All the characters written on a PC and then deleted go to straight to PC hell. If you're using a PC, you can probably see the deleted characters, because you're in PC hell also.

Stephen King's explanation: Every time you hit the (Del) key you unleash a tiny monster inside the cursor, who tears the poor, unsuspecting characters to shreds, drinks their blood, then eats them, bones and all. Hah, hah, hah!

The Christian Church's approach to characters: The nice characters go to Heaven, where they are bathed in the light of happiness. The naughty characters are punished for their sins. Naughty characters are those involved in the creation of naughty words, such as "breast," "sex," and contraception."

Dave Barry's explanation: The deleted characters are shipped to Battle Creek, Michigan, where they're made into Pop-Tart filling; this explains why Pop-Tarts are so flammable, while cheap imitations are not flammable. I'm not making this up.

IBM's explanation: The characters are not real. They exist only on the screen when they are needed, as concepts, so to delete them is merely to de-conceptualize them. Get a life.

PETA's (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) explanation: You've been DELETING them??? Can't you hear them SCREAMING??? Why don't you go CLUB some BABY SEALS while wearing a MINK, you pig!!!!