The amazing and wonderfully comfortable thing about most vets is that when you happen to meet up with another vet on the way to wherever you need to be,  say at my local VA medical facility, conversation is often picked up as if you’d been good friends all along. No preamble or awkward hellos as usually is the case when meeting someone you don’t know for the first time. And this very thing happened down at the White River Junction VA yesterday while on my way back to the parking lot.

“I heard a decent joke the other day”, he said as if we were picking up a never ending conversation.

“And what was that?”, I responded. And this is what he told:

A man dies and ends up standing in a line of people waiting to see Saint Peter. As the line becomes shorter he notices that St. Peter is waving his arms about pointing in 3 different directions as he sends the newly deceased on their way.

As time went on he became very curious as to what all this was about so when it finally became his turn to stand in from of St. Peter he asked him what all the pointing was for.

“Say Peter”, he asked. “I noticed you were pointing people in different directions and I was wondering what that was all about.”

“Well, said St. Peter, “That’s easy”. “You see, over in that direction is the Pearly Gates and this direction over here is where people go who are scheduled to burn in Hell”

“And what about all those people standing over there?”, the man asked.

“Oh”, said Peter. Those are New Englanders scheduled for Hell”. They’re too wet to burn”.

I chuckled all the way back to the Jeep.