I went to church the other morning. I do that sometimes.

I was told the church is in debt.

At least, I think that was what the man said. He told a story, cracked a joke, shared a Bible passage and made me feel pretty good for awhile until I realized what he was talking about.

Personally, I’d rather get that news from the preacher. Let the man up front level with the congregation about how bad it really is.

The results might be different.

There is the story of a pastor who got up one Sunday and announced to his congregation: “I have good news and bad news. The good news is, we have enough money to pay for our new building program. The bad news is, it’s still out there in your pockets.”

Do that and see what kind of a reaction you get.

I went to the Tendermaid Sandwich Shop and sat next to an Austin city official. He said the city was in debt. That also made me depressed.

I tried to escape reality and went to a Mower County board meeting and heard the same thing: The county’s in debt.

It made me feel more depressed.

When I got home, I opened the mail. There was a birthday card from a friend at Dexter.

She read in the paper I had a birthday.

There was another card in the mail that day from two Austin friends who had just returned from a trip to Israel and they sent me a birthday card.

They must have been suffering jet lag to do a thing like that so soon after returning from the Middle East.

The birthday was my 65th, but celebrating such a birthday is like celebrating getting new dentures.

There’s more to look back upon than to look forward to at that age.

A teenage daughter of a co-worker asked me, “If a turtle loses its shell, is it naked or homeless?”

I tried to figure that one out at Lenten services last night, when I should have been listening to the sermon.

It didn’t end when I got home and turned on the television: There was news of another plane crash. Only the black box survived.

“Why don’t they make the airplane out of the same indestructible material that they make the black box?” I wondered.

Still depressed, I went to work the next day.

I opened my e-mails to find something funny to read.

A friend sent me the top 10 winners in the International Pun Contest.

The No. 9 winner was this one: “Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.”

It made me smile, but then I read the rest of the story: There was the person who sent 10 different puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in 10 did.

I realized I had been had at that point and stayed depressed for the rest of the day.

When I prepared to leave work, a friend from Adams had sent me an e-mail she called “the new alphabet.”

I read it:

“A’s for arthritis; B’s for bad back, C’s for chest pains, perhaps car-d-iac?”

I couldn’t finish it I was so depressed. So I went home and watched “World’s Dumbest Criminals” on True TV.

It made me feel like a genius.