Tuesday, June 16, 2026

I'LL BET I REALLY COULD STUMP MARK CONSUELOS!

 


On the morning TV show, Live With Kelly and Mark, there is a daily segment called “Stump Mark,” where a home viewer is selected to call in and tell Mark Consuelos two statements – one true and one false. Then he has to guess which one is the truth. If he fails to guess correctly, the caller wins a special T-shirt and mug.

Usually the statements go something like this:  “I once sat right next to Tom Hanks on a flight to Los Angeles,” or “My apple pie has won six blue ribbons at the annual county fair.” 

Then after asking a few basic questions, Mark makes his guess about which statement is true.

Although his rate of success varies, one month his average for correct guesses was close to 70 percent, which was impressive.

Whenever I watch “Stump Mark,” I usually find myself wondering which statements I would make if I were the caller. So just for the fun of it, I’m going to list 20 statements below and have you, my readers, guess which are true and which are false. The answers will be listed at the end of this, right after you scroll down past the photos of the free books. Give yourself five points for each answer you get correct. Of course, those of you who have been reading my blog regularly for years, just might have an advantage!  Good luck!

 

TRUE OR FALSE?

 

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Tuesday, June 9, 2026

MY PREVIOUS CARS SHOULD HAVE COME WITH REAR-END EXTERIOR AIRBAGS

 

 

My current car is the first car I’ve owned that has an airbag. And to be honest, I’m terrified of the thing. The thought of it exploding out of my steering wheel at about 200 m.p.h. and coming in contact with some fragile body part, doesn’t exactly make me feel relaxed when I’m behind the wheel. In fact, I find myself sitting up straighter and not slouching at all when I drive now, just to prevent my nose from potentially being flattened.

Not that I ever plan on having an accident anyway. I’ve had two in my life, neither of which was my fault (but I guess most people say that!). Which reminds me of my friend Bobby, who was hit broadside by another car not long ago.

“Well, yeah, I went through the red light,” Bobby said, “but if the guy coming in the opposite direction hadn’t been driving so darned fast, he wouldn’t have hit me!”

Anyway, my first accident happened back in the mid-1980s. I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of the Allenstown town hall, waiting for the members of the zoning board to arrive for a meeting. The building also housed the police department.

As I sat there, looking through some paperwork I’d brought for the meeting, something suddenly smashed into the back of my car. Even though my car's engine was turned off and the gearshift was in “P,” it was propelled forward, right off the asphalt and onto the grass adjacent to it. When my car finally came to a halt, I turned around to see what had hit me.

It was a police cruiser, with a very red-faced young rookie standing next to it.

“You weren’t parked there when I left earlier!” he accused me.

I figured if that was the best defense he could come up with, then he was in big trouble. And as it turned out, he WAS in big trouble. The cruiser he was driving was brand new and being used on patrol for the first time. 

I later heard that the poor rookie was teased mercilessly about it for months and was nicknamed "Crash" by his fellow officers.

My second accident occurred just three years later. I was on an assignment for work and was driving through a town near Framingham, Massachusetts when I stopped at a red light at a busy intersection. To the right of me, a young woman was strolling down the sidewalk. She was wearing the shortest, tightest mini-skirt I had ever seen…like about a quarter-inch from getting her arrested for indecent exposure. However, (and it pains me to admit this) she did have the perfect body for it.

Not surprisingly, she became quite a distraction as she walked along. SO distracting, in fact, the driver of the car that came up behind mine didn’t even notice the stoplight – or my car sitting at it.

The impact sent my car sailing through the intersection. But by some miracle, the timing was perfect – the light had just turned red in the other direction. In my panic, however, I did something really dumb. Because my foot already had been on the brake when I was hit, I got confused and stomped on the gas pedal in an effort to stop my out-of-control car. How or why I didn’t plow into any cars or pedestrians as I sped along still baffles me, because I traveled about two blocks before I realized my mistake and finally switched my foot back to the brake.

The moment I pulled over to the curb, another car pulled up right behind me. A tall, young man about 20 jumped out and rushed over to me. “Are you okay?” he asked. “ I saw everything!  It was a blue Dodge Colt that hit you! The guy zoomed right off, though – and with his whole front end smashed in! Crazy!”

“I’m fine,” I said, even though my heart was racing so fast, I thought I might do a face-plant on the pavement at any second. “When the police get here, can you do me a big favor and tell them everything you just saw?”

“Police?” the guy repeated, visibly paling a shade or two. He jumped back into his car and took off so fast, all I saw was a cloud of exhaust and some skid marks.

So much for my eyewitness.

Seeing that cell phones weren’t something people carried around with them back in the 1980s, I walked into a beauty salon near where I’d parked and used their phone to call the police. I then went back outside to assess the damages on my car. The rear end was dented and the frame looked bent. One of my tail lights also was smashed.

A half-hour later, a very bored-looking police officer arrived. He asked a few routine questions, and seemed about as interested in my answers as if I’d been telling him about the latest shade of lipstick I’d just bought.

“Here,” he finally said, handing a blank accident-report to me and yawning. “Take this home, fill it out, and mail it back to me. I don’t have time to bother with it right now.”

“Exactly!” I said. “You have to go catch the guy who hit me!  He’s driving a blue Dodge Colt!”

He shrugged. “If you don’t have the plate number, we’ll never find it. He’s long gone by now.”

“But the whole front end of his car is smashed in!”  I said. “That should narrow it down a bit, don't you think?”

He shrugged again. “Just call your insurance company when you get home and they’ll  handle it. And if you later feel some delayed pain or an injury, we have no-fault insurance here anyway, so your insurance still would be the one to handle it."

“But my rates will go up!” I protested. “That’s not fair.”

He disappeared without another word.

Muttering under my breath, I drove to the nearest garage, where I explained the situation to a mechanic and asked him if he thought my car still was sound enough to make it home to New Hampshire.

“Do you expect me to just drop everything and check out YOUR car?” he snapped. “Make an appointment like everyone else!”

“Make an appointment?" I snapped back, picturing his image in the form of a voodoo doll with me sticking pins into some particularly painful spots. "I just told you I live in New Hampshire!"

I was so frustrated by then, I asked to use his phone and called AAA for a tow. I then rode shotgun in the tow truck all the way back to New Hampshire.

I’ll admit I was tempted to be creative when I filled out that totally blank accident report. I mean, for as much attention as that police officer had paid to me, I could have written down just about anything and he wouldn’t have known the difference. I thought of a few witty things I could write, such as “A convoy of ice-cream trucks 'creamed' my car” or “A motorcycle stunt-rider succeeded in jumping over 12 vehicles, and mine was number 13.”

But in the end, I just wrote down the truth…that Robert Redford and I were sitting in his brand new Mercedes at the red light when the guy in the car behind us was so busy staring at a hot chick in a mini-skirt, he smashed right into us.

Simple.

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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.











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Saturday, May 30, 2026

THE FEAR OF ADDING SOME ZIP TO MY LIFE...

 

For some unknown reason, I've never been good with zippers. Give me a zipper and I can get a wad of clothing securely jammed in it within 20 seconds, usually after I've already zipped the shirt or jacket up to my chin. Then it takes the skill of Houdini to wriggle my way out of it.

On the plus side, if I'm ever confined to a straitjacket (which is a distinct possibility), I've had so much practice squeezing out of snug clothing, I'm pretty sure I'd be able to escape with very little effort.

I can't count the number of times I've run out of patience and just yanked the zipper apart with both hands, taking a big piece of material with it. As a result, many of my clothes have holes in some pretty unusual places.

And when I worked as a teacher’s aide for grades kindergarten through three and was assigned to jacket-zipping duty for the youngsters who hadn’t yet mastered the technique, many of those poor kids missed half of their recesses due my struggles to get their zippers to actually zip.

To be honest, they probably would have done a better job at zipping their own jackets themselves, even though they were novices.

Because of this, I strongly suspect I’m the main reason why the Velcro Company thought it might be a good idea to introduce its product for sale to the general public back in the 1950s.

A few years ago, while shopping in the mall, I saw a pair of black suede ankle-boots with zippers on the sides (a sure sign that I should have turned and run for my life) that I just had to have.

And foolish, naïve soul that I was, I bought them.

I loved those boots. They were comfortable and looked great with jeans. But right from the start, I had the sinking feeling they were doomed.

Sure enough, I'd had them only about a month when I, hurrying to get ready for an appointment one morning, quickly zipped the left boot with more force than necessary. The metal tab – the zipper pull – came off in my hand.

No problem, I thought. I'll just tie a piece of string or wire onto the zipper and use that to pull it up. That's when I discovered that the metal loop the tab had hooked onto was split in half.

At that point, with the zipper only halfway up, I grabbed my hairbrush and used the tip of the handle to force the zipper to the top of the boot. Then I rushed off to my appointment.

The funny thing about a zipper that's missing its tab is that it doesn't lock…and therefore, slides back down as you walk. By the time I arrived at my destination, parked my car and dashed through the parking lot, the boot was completely unzipped and nearly flopping off my foot. I was afraid I’d leave it lying on the asphalt somewhere and fully expose the lint-covered, pale blue sock I hadn't bothered to be fussy about when I got dressed earlier (because I’d figured my boot would hide it)…and then my foot would announce to the world, "Look, everybody! Sally's wearing a frumpy old sock that doesn't match anything she's wearing!"

I wasn’t about to stop wearing my favorite boots, however, so I searched online for a shoe-repair shop and found one within a half-hour from my house. Filled with hope, I shoved my precious boot into a bag and headed over there.

When I arrived, there was a customer ahead of me whose running shoe needed only two stitches. "It'll take about three days," the cobbler (shoe-repair technician?) said to him. "And it will cost $8."

I stood there mentally calculating how many stitches it would take to put in an entire new zipper and was up to about $84 when the cobbler asked if he could help me.

"I wrecked my zipper," I said, handing the boot to him.

He checked it over. "It still zips okay," he said. "But it won't lock anymore, so the zipper won't stay up."

I smiled weakly and said, "Yeah, I kind of figured that out on my own."

My boot was ready in a week, and it looked and worked as good as new, for a cost of less than $20. I was tempted to bring in the other boot and have him replace that zipper, too, just as a precautionary measure, because I figured its days also were numbered.  

But so far, so good. The original zipper is still intact on that one.

Just because I haven’t destroyed that one zipper yet, however, I’m not allowing myself to get too cocky, especially considering my past history. In fact, just the other day I saw this new support-bra online for “mature” women who not only have problems with sagging, but also have trouble hooking their bras in the back due to mobility issues. My interest was piqued.

Until I noticed the bra zipped up the front.

The images my brain instantly conjured of me fumbling with that zipper on the bra and inevitably getting a certain body part caught in it, induced so much wincing, I immediately vetoed any and all thoughts of ever even trying on one of those torture devices.

That is, of course, unless they come out with a Velcro version…


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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.




 

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Tuesday, May 19, 2026

THE NIGHT "DEAL OR NO DEAL" NEARLY BECAME A VERY BIG DEAL

 

Lately I’ve been watching all of the daily reruns of the old game show “Deal or No Deal,” which premiered on NBC back in 2005 and starred Howie Mandel as the host (not to be confused with the game show “Let’s Make a Deal,” which premiered right about the time Columbus discovered America and was hosted by Monty Hall).

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Deal or No Deal, here is a brief summary: The show features 26 gorgeous female models, each one carrying a numbered briefcase that contains a cash amount (anywhere from $.01 to $1,000,000 dollars). Then the contestant, by eliminating all of the other cases one by one, attempts to figure out which case holds the million dollars, to win that amount. But at any time throughout the game, the contestant can opt to quit trying to find the million-dollar case and accept a much lower cash offer from the show's resident villain, The Banker, instead.   

The game is more complicated than I just described it, but that’s the gist of it anyway.

I’m realizing now that my behavior hasn’t changed much at all since I first watched the show over 20 years ago. I’m still not thrilled about seeing 26 shapely models with perfect hair, perfect makeup and gleaming white smiles every morning while I’m sitting here in my holey sweatpants with my thinning hair in a sloppy bun, my partial denture lying on a coaster on the end table, and dark circles under my eyes that make me look as if I’m a descendent of Rocket Raccoon from Guardians of the Galaxy.

I also still shout in frustration at the contestants, “Pick case number (enter any number from 1-26), you fool!”

I clearly remember, back when the program first aired, how enthralled my husband and I were to see a game show that was so elaborate, so unique…and so visually  captivating with its wall-to-wall sea of cleavage. Millions of other people also must have been as equally enthralled because Deal of No Deal instantly became a huge success. I suspect, however, it may have been (as it was in my late husband’s case) due more to the models than a love of the game itself.

Still, for whichever reason, the show grew so popular, NBC decided to take advantage of it and began to air it three nights per week…Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Also, to further entice viewers, they added an opportunity for the people at home to select one of six briefcases in a special Lucky Case Game each night and compete to win $10,000. Viewers were instructed to enter their case-number guess via a text message or email prior to the end of the show. All of the correct answers then were grouped together and a lucky home-viewer was selected at random to win the prize

So every night the show aired, both my husband and I faithfully submitted our guesses.

“Which briefcase do you think is holding the $10,000 tonight?” I’d ask him.

“Number four.”

“My gut is telling me it’s in number three,” I’d say and then enter each of our numbers.

Of course, the winning case always turned out to be any case other than the ones we chose. So my gut obviously was a lousy predictor. 

But one Wednesday night as we faithfully prepared to enter yet again, I suddenly experienced an overwhelming feeling the $10,000 was in case number one. It was like a psychic message from above or maybe divine intervention. In fact, the feeling was so strong, when my husband told me to submit his entry for case number five, I entered number one for both of us.

At about 8:45 each night, the show would announce that the contest was over and no more entries would be accepted. Then the winning briefcase number would be revealed. The name of the winner, however, never was announced until the very end of the show.

“You know,” I said to my husband that night as we sat waiting to hear the briefcase number, “when you enter the contest, they ask you for only your name and phone number. Yet when they announce the winner, they always say what city and state they are from. How do they know that?”

“They probably call the winner and get the information during the commercial break just before they announce that person’s name on the air,” he said.

Howie Mandel’s voice interrupted our discussion. “And tonight’s winning case is number one!”

“Yessssss!” I squealed, clapping my hands. “Now I can confess! I put both of our entries on number one tonight!”

“You mean one of us actually could win the $10,000?” My husband’s eyebrows rose.   

“Well, we’ll know for sure any minute now,” I said, “especially if our phone rings during this commercial.”

As if on cue, the phone rang at that precise moment. My husband and I gasped in unison and froze, staring wide-eyed at each other. Finally, I jumped up and dashed to the phone.

“Good evening. May I please speak to Sally Breslin?” a professional-sounding male voice asked.

“Speaking!” I managed to choke out before I suffered from what I was certain was an impending heart attack.

By then, my husband was up from his chair, his eyes riveted on me.

“I’m calling from Chase Manhattan Bank with a special credit-card offer for you!” the man said.

Never have I wanted to commit murder more than I wanted to commit it at that moment.

“It’s nearly nine o’clock at night!” I shouted at him. “Don’t you guys ever sleep?”  I slammed the phone and then took a deep breath in an effort to calm my racing heart, which still was somewhere up around my tonsils.

My husband, his mouth forming a tight line, said, “Um, I think I can assume that wasn’t the TV show calling?”

Even though we got over the excitement of that brief feeling of being winners, we never got over the lingering feeling of being losers. Still, gluttons for punishment that we were, we continued to play the at-home briefcase game and even guessed the correct number twice. But we never won a thing. 

My feelings of resentment toward the show, however, were eased one night when the producers decided to replace the 26 sexy female models with 26 muscular, bare-chested, hunky firefighters…for one episode.

And that possibly might be the reason why I’m currently watching all of the reruns…


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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.










 



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Monday, May 11, 2026

ARE KIDNEY-STONE PAINS WORSE THAN LABOR PAINS? DON'T ASK A GUY!

 

A friend of mine, who’s in his 80s, recently called to tell me he’d just passed a kidney stone.

“Worst pain I’ve ever had,” he said. “I’m not sure, but I think it must be easier and less painful for women to pass them…considering the male anatomy.”

I had to disagree with him. I remembered when my former boss, Marge, had a kidney stone and said that up until then, she’d thought labor pains were the worst agony she ever would be forced to endure.

My friend’s call also made me think back to the time when my husband suffered with kidney-stone pain…and was determined to hide it from me.

It all began one day when I happened to notice he was walking slightly bent over.

“Backache,” he explained when I questioned him about it. “I must have pulled a muscle or something.”

“Doing what?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Adjusting the position of your recliner?”

As the days passed, however, his posture grew even worse, until he bore a striking resemblance to Quasimado. I then began to take his pain more seriously.

“Maybe you should see a doctor…or a chiropractor,” I suggested, even though past experience had taught me I probably would have had a bigger response if I’d have suggested it to my Rottweiler.

“No, I’m fine,” he said, forcing what only could have been described as a constipated smile. “It’s nothing…really!”

The next night, I woke up to discover I was alone in bed and the house was completely dark and silent. I was just about to get up and search for my missing husband when I heard faint moaning coming from the living room.

“Honey, is that you?” I called out. “Are you OK?”

“I’m fine!” his voice responded, almost too brightly. “I couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to disturb you with all of my tossing and turning. You go back to sleep. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“But I thought I heard you moaning,” I said.

“Me? Moaning?  Don’t be silly!” He forced a laugh. “I had the TV on for a few minutes. You probably heard that.”

Sighing, I rolled over, closed my eyes and tried to get back to sleep. Just as I was about to doze off, I heard a much louder groan, followed by another. I sat up. 

“Shhhh!” I could hear my husband’s hushed voice scolding himself out in the living room. “Stop groaning or Sally will hear you and make you go to the doctor’s!  Why are you groaning anyway, you idiot?  It’s not helping anything!”  

No sooner had he finished saying the words, did an unmistakable cry of pain slip out.

“Are you sure you’re OK?” I called out to him. Not waiting for an answer, I got up and tiptoed out to the living room. There, kneeling on the floor with his arms wrapped around the footrest of his recliner and his head resting on the seat, was my perspiration-covered husband.

“I’m fine, honestly!” he was shouting, still thinking I was in the bedroom. “You go back to sleep now!”

I cleared my throat. “Having a secret affair with your recliner?” I asked.

His head snapped up, his eyes as wide as saucers. “Uh, this must look pretty weird, huh?” he said. He wiped his damp forehead with the back of his hand.

“That does it!  I’m calling the ambulance!” I headed for the phone.

“Nooo!” he cried, struggling to his feet. He tried to block my path, but took only one step and doubled over in pain. He sank to his knees and hugged the recliner again.

“This will go away,” he said, his voice muffled by the seat cushion. “I’ll be fine by tomorrow. No need for a hospital…no need at all.”

A half-hour later (only because I threatened him with divorce) we were on our way to the emergency room. A half-hour after that, he was admitted to the hospital.

A slew of tests and x-rays followed, then the doctor entered the room. “I have bad news and good news,” he said. “The bad news, Mr. Breslin, is you have a kidney stone that’s causing nearly a complete blockage. The good news is I’m pretty sure we can go up and get it rather than have to make an incision.”

“Go Up? Up where?” my husband squeaked. “And with what?”

It’s a pity cell phones with cameras weren’t available back then because I’d have loved to have captured a photo of his expression at the precise moment the doctor answered his questions. 

But if I thought that expression was camera-worthy, his next expression far surpassed it.

“We’re going to start prepping you for the procedure,” the nurse said to him after the doctor left. “I’ll be right back with the Fleet.”

Once my husband and I were alone, he looked at me and asked. “She’s coming back with a fleet? What does the navy have to with any of this? Are they sending in a group of volunteer medics from a ship or something?”

Never before had I struggled so hard to hold back my laughter.

“Um…Fleet is a brand of enema,” I felt obligated to warn him.

My husband did just fine with the preparation and the procedure and later was presented with the stone, which was much smaller than I’d imagined for causing so much pain. But it had sharp, jagged edges that made it kind of resemble a star. And because of those sharp points, the star caused some scratching and bleeding during its maiden voyage through the ureter.

For that problem, the nurse kindly provided my husband with a thick, bulky sanitary-napkin.

The first time he got up out of his hospital bed, he walked as if he’d just ridden a horse cross-country.

“How can you women stand wearing these things every month?” he muttered.

While he was recovering at home afterwards, I made the mistake of mentioning Marge’s comment about kidney-stone pain being even worse than labor pains. Little did I know my words would create a monster.

For weeks after that, my husband talked about how “bravely” he had suffered for nearly two weeks with excruciating kidney pain before going to the hospital. And even then, he said, he wouldn’t have given in if I hadn’t forced him to.

“Women are always saying that if men had to give birth, there wouldn’t be any kids, because men are such sissies about pain,” he said. “Well, I guess I just proved that theory wrong, didn’t I!”

By then, I’d had just about enough of “Super Kidney-Stone Man” and his tales of courage and endurance.

“You know that tiny little stone they removed from you?” I asked him. “Well, imagine that it weighed at least seven pounds and was about 20 inches long when they dragged it out of you. That’s what labor feels like!”

Funny, but after that, he never mentioned it again.

 

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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.




 

                                                       

                                

 

 


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Monday, May 4, 2026

MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU!


Considering I’m writing this on May 4th, which has been proclaimed as Star Wars Day, along with all of the recent hoopla surrounding the upcoming new Star Wars movie, The Mandalorian and Grogu, scheduled to be released on May 22nd, I can’t help but think back to the very first Star Wars movie I saw nearly 50 years ago.

At the time, my husband and I eagerly had been looking forward to seeing the film, mainly because of its enticing description: “A technologically advanced science-fiction movie with never-before-seen special effects!”  So on a Tuesday night during the first week it was playing in Concord, we headed to the theater…and found a line of people that stretched across the entire length of the parking lot.

“I hate waiting in lines,” my husband complained in a tone that told me he was ready to turn the car around and make a beeline for home. “I had enough of it when I was in the military.”

“Well, we’re here now,” I said. “And I really want to see the movie, don't you?”

So we joined the line. When we finally got to the point where only five people were ahead of us, an employee announced that all of the tickets had been sold out and the next showing would be in three hours. 

The look on my husband’s face was easy to read. The only movie we’d be watching in three hours would be on our portable TV in the bedroom.

Unfortunately, back then no one had home computers or smartphones, so tickets couldn’t be purchased in advance. Therefore, we had to keep returning to the theater and waiting in line. And every time we did and failed to get a ticket, my husband became less and less enthusiastic about seeing the movie.

“Want to try again tonight to go see Star Wars?” I asked him one Thursday morning, a few days after our third attempt had resulted in yet another dismal failure.

Had I just told him I'd purchased two tickets to the opera, he couldn’t have looked less enthusiastic.

“I would rather have an appendectomy… performed with a potato peeler,” he muttered.

“I promise this will be the last time,” I said. “If we don’t get in tonight, we won’t try again until at least a month from now, when the crowds will be a lot smaller.”

He rolled his eyes. Finally, he said, “OK, but this is it. I’m not standing in any more lines. I don’t care if the cast promises to show up in person and reenact the entire movie live, onstage. This is the last time I’m going to waste a night standing in the movie theater’s parking lot. I think I’ve memorized every bump, crack and pot hole in it.”

So back to the theater we went, and took our places at the end of yet another seemingly endless line.

“Time to spend another hour looking at the backs of people’s heads,” my husband said, frowning. "What do you want to bet these people all got out of work at noon today and camped out here all afternoon?"

When the line dwindled until there was only one person left in front of us, I felt a sudden pang of hope as my heart raced.

“Do you think we’ll actually make it this time?”  I whispered to my husband, reaching for his hand and clasping it in a death grip.

“Don’t be silly,” he answered. “You know what kind of luck we have. Prepare to have the ticket window slammed shut in our faces.”

But to our shock, we each ended up clenching a ticket in our sweaty little palms. I didn’t know whether to use my ticket to get into the theater…or to have it bronzed.

After the movie, my husband and I, wide-eyed with awe, both agreed it had been worth all of the time and trouble we’d gone through to see it.

And on that night, two Star Wars fanatics were born.

The next day, we, as if we were two young kids, headed to Toys R Us and bought several small Star Wars action figures and a huge model of the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo’s ship.

And as time passed and the sequels were released, our Star Wars buying continued to escalate…into an obsession.  We accumulated so much stuff, we ran out of space and had to rent a storage unit for all of it. And far too often, we’d spend so much money shopping for additions to our collection, we’d end up living on peanut-butter sandwiches for a week.

But it was worth it to sleep on Star Wars sheets and brush our teeth with Star Wars toothbrushes.

Finally, my mother sat me down one day and said, “Look, this Star Wars habit of yours has got to stop. You’re just throwing your money away on all of this... junk!  Be smart and put it into a CD or a money-market account instead of wasting it on some cheaply made toys.”

But my husband and I were too hooked on collecting to stop. Our Saturday nights no longer were spent going out for pizza and a movie. Instead we spent them roaming through the aisles in Toys R Us and tossing Star Wars items into our cart, and then heading over to Bradlees or K-Mart to do the same thing.

By the time we finally decided to take a breather from collecting, we’d spent over $2,000. Considering the fact that the average price of a new car back then was about $4,000, our Star Wars spending was no small matter.

And once again, my mother was more than eager to remind us of that.

“You’re both supposed to be grown adults!” she said when she came to visit and noticed bags of Star Wars toys on the kitchen table, before we’d had the chance to take them to the storage unit and hide them. “Mark my words, the day will come when you’ll regret not depositing your money in the bank and having a nice nest- egg instead of just a bunch of worthless Dark Vader dolls!”

“It’s Darth Vader, not Dark Vader, Mom,” I said, impressed she even knew that much about the movie.

“I don’t care what his name is!” she said. “I just hope he’ll pay your rent when you end up broke and homeless!”

Years later, in 1998, I bought a collectors’ price guide for Star Wars toys and painstakingly looked up the value of each item in our collection. Many of the little 3.5-inch action figures, which had cost $1.99 each, were listed as worth between $100 and $300 each. The 12-inch action figures, which we’d paid $11.95 each for at K-Mart, were worth up to $500 each, depending on the character. All in all, the grand total for our original $2,000 collection, according the guide, turned out to be about $70,000 at that time.

With a smug sense of victory, I couldn’t wait to show the guide and my calculations to my mother. Her expression couldn’t have looked more shocked if I had shown her a photo of her mailman delivering mail...in the nude.

“Are you serious?” she asked. “All of those toys you bought are actually worth that much money?”

I nodded. “Much more than any money-market account would have earned, don't you think?”

So after that, whenever birthdays or Christmas rolled around, my mom would gift us with Star War toys. We were excited we finally had won her over from the Dark Side.

When I was wandering through Walmart the other day, I happened to spot a huge display of Star Wars toys featuring characters and vehicles from the upcoming new film. I felt myself being drawn to it, the same way I’d been drawn to the original displays back in 1977.

I struggled to resist the sudden urge to run down the aisle and wildly fling toys into my cart.

But what stopped me was I knew if I bought a few Star Wars toys, I’d have to hitchhike home with them because I wouldn’t be able to buy any gas for my car, which already was running on fumes (mainly because I’d been waiting to win the lottery so I could afford to purchase some fuel).

Alas, old habits die hard. I yielded to temptation and bought just one new Star Wars toy…a small Lego set featuring the Mandalorian and Grogu on their speeder bike…for under $10.

And last night on a collectors’ show on TV, in honor of May the 4th, they showed a man who’s been collecting Star Wars figures since he was a child.

One of the figures he owns – a rocket-firing Boba Fett, of which fewer than 100 were produced before the company realized that maybe a toy that fired small projectiles at children wasn’t such a hot idea – was appraised at $10 million.

The remainder of his collection was appraised at an additional $2 million.

I’m seriously thinking about hitchhiking back to Walmart.


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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.




 

                                            

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Thursday, April 23, 2026

SHARING MORE BAD BOOK COVERS



When I have some rare, leisurely time, I enjoy browsing through the various websites that display what they believe are bad, even terrible, book covers. I especially enjoy reading the humorous comments left by many of the other bad-cover enthusiasts.

So I occasionally like to share some of these covers and comments on here, so my readers hopefully can have a few chuckles, too. And I’ll continue to share them every now and then, until I find one of my own covers on one of the sites (which, as much as I hate to admit it, is a distinct possibility).

So here are just a few of the many recent bad-cover candidates I’ve seen (a few of which had the "honor" of appearing on more than one site!) and some of the comments that were made about them.

(If you need a clearer, more detailed look at the covers, just click on them).








  • For a second, I thought she was beating up a cop!
  • They could have done a better job at casting the thug for the photo. I think he’s Old Mel, the janitor from the publishing house.
  • You have to buy book two to find out how to defend yourself against guys who don’t reside in nursing homes.
  • Hey, I would buy that book…and I’m not even a woman!




  • “Hello, my Pretty! Come take a bite of my delicious apple!”
  • That matador doll on the right looks suspiciously like my missing Cousin Dave.
  • Pleasure? As she holds a shrunken head impaled on a skewer?
  • She’s wearing a wedding ring, so some lucky guy has to live surrounded by a constant army of applehead dolls.
  • Hey, Drena, whatcha been up to lately? “Oh, just making some new friends.”





  • Get thee to the bonfire…or else!
  • Great cover!  A bison, a renaissance fair and an escapee from the annual harvest parade! What more do you need?
  • Wonder whose side that very large bison is on?
  • Looks like Bigfoot fell into some honey and then rolled in the leaves.
  • I can hear the author now…”Who needs an artist to design my cover when I’ve got some stock photos and my Photoshop program? Heck, I’m all set!” 
  • No wonder the author's name is all blurry - I wouldn't want anyone to know I was associated with this book either!






  • My five-year-old drew a picture of his grandpa that looked exactly like this.
  • Judging from his expression, this alien obviously couldn’t care less about making contact.
  • I’m sure that several minutes of intense artwork were devoted to designing this cover.
  • I think he’s saying, “What do you mean I’m an alien? YOU are, not me!”





  • Apparently the author has never seen a real dog or cat.
  • Neither has the cover illustrator.
  • The dog looks as if it mated with an albino bat…or maybe a kangaroo.
  • El Chupacabra!
  • And now it’s trying to mate with an overfed cat.
  • Judging from the cat's expression, I think the dog just succeeded!
  • If these two animals walked into the room, I’d run for my life!
  • Psychic pets? Would you actually want to know what these two were thinking?





  • Conan is wearing a towel?
  • Yeah, it’s pretty inconsiderate of that monster to attack him when he just stepped out of the shower.
  • Is that teeny sword he’s holding supposed to be big enough to kill – well, whatever that thing is?
  • It’s a hippie, mutant ostrich.
  • Conan hasn’t aged very well. He looks old and decrepit.
  • And in bad need of a manicure.





  • Looks like a severely constipated Jim Carrey.
  • Or a guy passing a kidney stone.
  • Reminds me of that fake-crying face toddlers use.
  • This is a perfect cover for this book because my own face looked exactly like that when I was reading it and realized I’d read only 100 pages and still had over 700 left to go.





  • Not a bad cover – just a bit cheeky.
  • Don’t know on which planet it takes place, but it obviously has two moons.
  • He’s wearing a belt, a cross-strap that’s doing nothing, a knife holster...and his woman’s bikini underwear?
  • This book is guaranteed to keep you “glute” to the plot!
  • The cover really cracks me up (pun intended)!
  • Did they have Brazilian butt-lifts back when this book was published?






  • I’d immediately pack up and move!
  • At least her legs haven’t deteriorated yet.
  • That new wrinkle-removing face cream she bought really works!
  • Stephen King’s prom date?
  • I’ve heard of cheerleaders cutting calories to stay in shape, but I think this one carried things a bit too far.





  • Instead of its first word being “Mama,” will it be “Meow-Ma?”
  • Is that a tail or a snake?
  • I don’t know, but whichever it is, I definitely wouldn’t want to change the diaper!
  • Or breast-feed that baby.
  • At least potty training would be easy. Just buy it a litter box.
  • And a flea collar.
  • On the bright side, you’d never have to worry about mice in the house. 
  • Or the kid begging you for a dog.



Well, that's all for now - I won't torture you any longer. Here's hoping you had at least a couple of chuckles while looking at these! If you scroll down past all of the free e-books below, you can leave comments about which book(s) you thought had the worst cover - or even the best! I'd love to know!

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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.




 






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