Jokes that live on: The gift that keeps on giving

For a birthday, today was below average. I mean, it was a Tuesday, a work day. There was no yellow cake with chocolate frosting, and I didn't even go out to dinner.

For a work day, however, today was pretty good. I got a lot done, I got to watch some court, and, at the end of a long day, I had a good laugh.

The story is this: I have a coworker, a friend, who is somewhat absentminded. I've known him long enough to have several stories about him, but, until tonight, the best one happened on a case that we were both on, where he had locked documents in a briefcase and forgotten the combination -- which he did not discover until we were in the midst of a hearing. After some physical comedy (and a trip out into the hallway), he managed to open one side of the briefcase and pull the documents out through the side -- and we handed very crumpled exhibits up to the judge.

Today, at about 6:45 this evening, he called my cell phone for the travel agency's after-hours number, because he had left his hotel reservation in the office that he was working from, and had left his BlackBerry at home. Lucky for him, I was still in the office, and we decided that the quickest answer would be for me to log in to his email. So we did -- and it turned out that he had forgotten to make a hotel reservation when he booked his flights and rental car. He then confessed that, prior to calling me, he had argued with the hotel desk clerk because he thought the hotel lost his reservation.

So, I left the office with a smile on my face. Not just because the story was funny, but because the end result is a joke that will be told at work happy hours for years to come. Ultimately, this mocking will last well into the future. It's a gift for posterity.