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Funny short stories for adults

Comedy about ordinary people in situations that get slightly worse every week, and about eleven minutes a story.

If you are looking for funny short stories for adults that you can finish in one sitting, these are written for exactly that. Each story is three episodes of about eight hundred words, so the whole thing takes around eleven minutes, and every one of them has an ending.

The comedy here is situational. Somebody makes one small decision, or one small joke, and then has to live with it while it grows. A homeowners association secretary takes the minutes word for word because the bylaws say to, and the president’s joke about paving the duck pond becomes policy. A weekend meteorologist loses her airtime one second at a time to the station owner’s elderly Great Dane. Three adult siblings lose their mother’s talking parrot and buy an understudy before her Sunday video call. A widower is signed up for a ballroom class he fully intends to quit. A man finds a tortoise in the road and meets everyone who claims it at the coffee shop on Saturday mornings.

The rule these stories are written to is that the jokes sit on top of something real. There is always something the narrator could actually lose, a job, a friend, a pond, a mother’s trust, and the laughs come from watching ordinary people behave the way people do when they are trying very hard not to lose it. Nobody is the butt of the joke for who they are. The comedy is the situation.

They are warm rather than cruel, and they all land somewhere kind. If you want feel-good short stories that are funny the whole way through and still have a little heart at the end, start anywhere on this page. Most of them hide a small line in the first episode that comes back, changed, in the last one.

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Every humor story on Wrendell

Let the Record Show by Joan Pemberton — Humor, 3 episodes, about 10 minutes, complete and free. Nobody else wanted to be secretary of our homeowners association, so I said yes, and I took the minutes word for word because the bylaws said to. Our president makes jokes. Our vice president seconds everything. We are now paving the duck pond.
A Chance of Dog by Erica Holloway — Humor, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. I have a degree in atmospheric science, a broadcast certification, and three minutes of airtime. The station owner’s Great Dane has none of those, and somehow he is winning.
Hello, Mother by Sean Mulroney — Humor, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. I took one screen out of my mother’s kitchen window, and now her parrot lives in the neighbor’s oak. She video-calls him Sunday at six, so my brother, my sister and I bought an understudy.
Slow, Slow, Quick, Quick by Ron Esposito — Humor, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. My daughter signed me up for ballroom dancing without asking. My partner is a retired drill sergeant who counts like the room is on fire, and I have eight Tuesdays to find a way out.
Found Tortoise, Very Calm by Tara Kincaid — Humor, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. I found a sixty-one pound tortoise walking down the yellow line and posted about her online. Now strangers keep claiming her, each under a different name, and my girlfriend wants her gone by Saturday.

Funny short stories for adults

Every humor story on Wrendell

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