A man takes his Rottweiler to the vet and says, "My dog's cross-eyed, is there anything you can do for him?" "Well," says the vet, "let's have a look at him." So he picks the dog up and examines his eyes, then checks his teeth. Finally, he says, "I'm going to have to put him down." "What? Because he's cross-eyed?" "No, because he's really heavy."

Barbara Walters had done a story on gender roles in Kuwait several years before the Gulf War, noting then that women customarily walked about 10 feet behind their husbands.

Recently she returned to Kuwait and observed that the men now walked several yards behind their wives.

Ms. Walters approached one of the women for an explanation. "This is marvelous," she said. "What enabled women here to achieve this reversal of roles?"

The Kuwaiti woman replied, "Land mines."