When a professor of mathematics noticed that his kitchen sink at home was leaking, he called a plumber. The plumber came out that same day, quickly fixed the leak and presented the professor with the bill. The professor was horrified to see that the bill for an hour's work amounted to one-third of his monthly salary. Grudgingly he paid the bill after expressing his discontent to the plumber. "I do sympathize," said the plumber. "So why don't you apply for a plumber's position with our company? You will earn far more than you do as a professor. But remember, when you apply, tell them that you completed only seven elementary classes. They don't like educated people." So the professor applied to the company and landed a job as a plumber. His salary improved beyond all recognition and he was generally happy with his life. Then one day the company decided that every plumber had to attend evening classes to complete the eighth grade. The professor went along and it so happened that the first class was math. To check students' knowledge, the teacher asked for a formula for the area of a circle. The professor immediately jumped up and went over to the white board, only to realize that he had forgotten the formula. He tried to work it out and proceeded to fill the board with integrals, differentials and other advanced formulae. At the end he came up with "minus pi times r squared." He didn't like the minus, so he started all over again, but struggled to remove it. Four times he tried, but each time he finished up with a minus. In despair and frustration, he turned to the class and heard all the plumbers whisper: "Switch the limits of the integral!" One of my college friends has a stutter and a lot of people think that's a bad thing, but to me that's just like starting certain words with a drum roll. That's not an impediment, that's suspense. Demetri Martin