A passenger train is creeping along slowly, so slowly that several passengers have begun wondering whether they would reach their destination before nightfall. Finally, with a long metallic screech, the train creaks to a halt. A passenger looks out the window and notices a conductor walking along the track outside. Curious and slightly annoyed by the unexplained delay, she leans out of the window and calls, “What’s going on?” The conductor looks up and casually replies, “Cow on the track!” The woman shakes her head, settles back into her seat, and waits. Ten minutes later, the train finally begins moving again, gathering speed as though the problem has been solved. The passengers relax, assuming the strange delay is behind them. Within five minutes, however, the train slows down and stops again. The woman looks out the window and, to her surprise, sees the very same conductor walking outside. She leans out of the window once more and yells, “What happened? Did we catch up with the cow again?” The conductor turns toward her with an exhausted expression and gives a simple answer that makes the whole delay even funnier: apparently, that cow was proving to be faster than the train.
The blonde wife came home from her first day commuting into the city. She had spent hours on the train, surrounded by unfamiliar faces, constant announcements, and the rocking motion of the carriage. Her husband noticed that she was looking a little pale and peaked, so he immediately asked, “Honey, are you feeling all right?” She sighed, dropped her bag by the door, and replied, “Not really. I’m nauseated from sitting backward on the train.” Her husband looked sympathetic and put an arm around her. “Poor dear,” he said. “Why didn’t you ask the person sitting across from you to switch seats for a while?” The wife stared at him for a moment as if he had suggested something completely impossible. “I couldn’t,” she replied. “There was no one there.” Her husband paused, trying to understand how she had managed to sit backward with nobody across from her. Then the answer finally dawned on him: she had apparently been facing the wrong direction for the entire journey and had never thought to simply turn around.
A blond was rollerblading with her headphones on, completely absorbed in whatever she was listening to. She eventually stopped outside a hair salon and walked inside, still wearing the headphones. She asked for a haircut and then gave the stylist one very specific instruction: the stylist could not take off her headphones under any circumstances. The stylist looked at the headphones, then at the woman, and explained that cutting her hair properly would be difficult if she could not remove them. The blond insisted, so the stylist refused to take the risk and told her she would have to find another salon. She left and went to a different hair salon, where she repeated exactly the same request. This time, the stylist agreed to work around the headphones and carefully began cutting her hair. Everything seemed fine at first. The blond sat quietly in the chair while the stylist worked. After a while, however, the blond became so relaxed that she slowly drifted off to sleep. The stylist continued working, but eventually needed to move the headphones out of the way. Thinking the woman would simply wake up, the stylist gently took them off. Suddenly, the blond gasped, her eyes opened wide, and she immediately fell out of the chair onto the floor. The stylist froze in horror and rushed to help her, but the woman had stopped breathing. Confused and terrified by what had just happened, the stylist picked up the headphones and put them on, desperate to understand what the woman could possibly have been listening to. Then the mystery was solved. The headphones were repeatedly playing a calm voice saying, “Breathe in… breathe out… breathe in… breathe out.” The stylist stared at the headphones in disbelief, realizing that the strange request had been much more serious than anyone had imagined—and that the final punchline was hidden inside the headphones all along.
