“Why’s it impossible to starve in the desert?” I asked My Darling B the other day.

A longish silence intervened. I hadn’t attempted to tell B an actual joke in years and I think she may have suspected I was asking for an honest answer. After weighing the question for what seemed like a full minute she finally appeared to decide it was most probably a setup for a punchline, so she gave up. “I don’t know. Why?”

“Because of all the sandwiches there,” I answered.

Crickets.

“Because of all the sand which is there,” I repeated.

Still nothing … no, wait! A glimmer of recognition! Ah, but then confusion.

“But it should be, ‘the sand that is there,’” she explained.

“Sure,” I chuckled, “but you can see how that would sort of kill the joke, right?”

“Right, but it doesn’t make sense the other way.”

My wife, the grammar police.