The How-to Joke

             Drip!  Drip!  Drip!  Drip-drip-drip-drip-drip!

            Nine-year-old Jake Carter looked down.  There was water all over the kitchen floor.  He didn't think he'd poured out that much water.  He'd filled the big glass pitcher at the sink, but he'd only poured out whatever it held. 

            Now the floor was flooded.  I didn't pour water on the floor.  I poured it on the cupcakes. 

            "How could this have happened?" he wailed, looking at the mess.  "I followed the joke directions."

            He tore off some paper towels and began mopping up the water.

            When he finished, he said, "Now I need to put the cupcakes in a box and take them to school to show my teacher, Miss Winters." 

            But the cupcakes were a disaster.  When he tried to pick up the soggy things, gooey chocolate cake gooshed between his fingers and fell onto the countertop in pasty, gloppy puddles, too soupy to handle.

            "This wasn't the way it was supposed to happen."

            Jake grabbed the red-covered joke book from the chair and tried to find the joke again.  Aloud he read, "What kind of cup won't hold water?  A cupcake!"

            Well, hooray!  He had done it right!  He'd poured water on the cupcakes, and they didn't hold water, just like the joke said.   

            But the cup part was missing from these cupcakes, and in truth, so was the part that was once cake.  All that was left just plain mush! 

            Jake waved his hands in frustration.  "How can I how-to this joke if I can't figure out how to how-to it?  I don't even know what I'm doing!"

            Was it only this morning that Miss Winters had made the how-to assignment?  It seemed so long ago.