A young mother walked into a neighborhood drugstore carrying her baby.
She approached the counter and asked whether she could use the store’s baby scale.
The clerk smiled apologetically.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. The infant scale is broken.”
The woman looked disappointed.
Then the clerk had an idea.
“We can still figure it out,” he said. “Just step onto the adult scale while holding the baby. Then we’ll weigh you by yourself and subtract your weight.”
The woman stared at him.
“That won’t work.”
The clerk looked confused.
“Why not?”
She shifted the baby in her arms and answered completely seriously:
“Because I’m not the mother.”
The clerk blinked.
The woman continued:
“I’m the aunt. My sister asked me to bring him in because she’s home sick.”
There was a long silence.
Then the clerk started laughing.
The woman laughed too.
Finally, he said, “Well… mathematically, it still works.”
She paused.
Then she laughed even harder.
They weighed her with the baby, then without him, and got the baby’s approximate weight anyway.
Sometimes the funniest misunderstandings happen because everyone assumes the simplest detail before anyone actually asks.
