No Subject

[Mark Katsouros <KATSOURO@UMDD>]

     They had a great system going.  She would kiss him right before
he was hand-cuffed, locked up, and so on, and during the kiss, she
would pass him the key.  And so it was; Houdini always managed to
escape from the unescapable.
     One day, though, a rather obnoxious man in the audience yelled
out before the kiss.  "Let's see you do this great escape without her
kiss!", the man demanded.  She looked at Houdini helplessly, but he
nodded so as to let her know that it was okay, and that he would find
a way to escape.  And without that important kiss, she slowly lowered
him into the water.
     A minute passed, and Houdini still had not surfaced.  She started
thinking about how he was the only thing in her life.  She would not
be able to go on without him.  Two minutes passed, and still no
Houdini.  Realizing that he was the most important thing in her life,
she began to reel the cage back out of the pool.  The audience
realized that something was seriously wrong.  The obnoxious man seemed
to almost be smiling with an "I told you so" look on his face.  There
was a lot of comotion.  Finally, the cage reached the surface, and the
eyes of everyone witnessing the event widened.  The audience broke
into great applause, for in the last row of the bleachers by the pool
stood Houdini, applauding himself along with everyone else.
     "Happy birthday, Kate", he whispered, as she greeted him on the
bleachers.  She smiled, and passed him the key.