An anecdote is a short tale narrating an interesting or amusing biographical incident. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always based on real life, an incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, in real places. However, over time, modification in reuse may convert a particular anecdote to a fictional piece, one that is retold but is “too good to be true”. Sometimes humorous, anecdotes are not jokes, because their primary purpose is not simply to evoke laughter, but to reveal a truth more general than the brief tale itself, or to delineate a character trait or the workings of an institution in such a light that it strikes in a flash of insight to their very essence. A brief monologue beginning “A man pops in a bar…” will be a joke.

My husband, usually a well dressed man went off to the market to buy himself a mozzarella cheese to eat for lunch, on that particular morning he’d gotten up late and knew the market would be closing soon, so he threw on the nearest clothes he could grab, and a baseball cap to hide himself from people he might know lol there was no time for him to shower let alone shave. As he arrived at the market most stalls had already gone and others were being taken down. He approached one of the market stall holders and asked if they had a mozzarella left, no he was told but had got some roast beef, so he asked the stall holder if he had some bread to make a sandwich, he didn’t but sent my husband to another seller, when my husband asked how much the bread cost the market seller told him nothing. He then went back to the other market seller who had the roast beef as to make his sandwich. The sandwich was then cut, prepared and paid for. As my husband bit into the sandwich the market stall holder said with great glee “that’ll be the best sandwich you’ve ever eaten in your life” he had mistaken my husband for a tramp…

Photo courtesy Laurel Fan Flickr Source Wikipedia