Welfare Recipient

A Woman walks into the welfare office, trailed by 8 kids. “Wow,” the social worker exclaims, “are they all yours?”

“Yes, they’re all mine,” the frustrated Mom sighs, having heard the question a thousand times. She then says, “Sit down Terry” and all the kids rush to find seats.

“Well,” says the social worker, “you must be here to sign up for assistance. I’ll need all your children’s names.”

“Well, to keep things simple, all the boys are named Terry and all the girls are named Terri.”

In Disbelief, the case worker says, “YOUR SERIOUS? They are all named Terry or Terri???”

The Mom replies, “Well yes, it makes things much easier. When it’s time to get them out of bed in the morning I yell TERRY, get up!”

When it’s time for dinner, I yell TERRY, dinner time! and they all come running. And if I need to stop one of them from running into the street I just yell STOP Terry, and they all stop dead in their tracks”

The social worker thinks things over for a bit, then wrinkles her forehead and says tentatively, “But what if you just want one kid to come to you, and not the whole bunch of them?”

“Oh, then I just call them by their last names.”

One of my daughters was a social worker before she retired, so based on various conversations over the years, there is more truth here than people want to acknowledge.