I'm trying to quit smoking, but I work in a liquor store and sell hundreds of cigarettes a day to people that smell like cigarettes, talk about cigarettes and smoke cigarettes.

...so quiting isn't going so well.

Sometimes my little brothers can tell I'm uncomfortable, but they don't know why.

Today one of them tried to make me feel better...

"Hey, what's wrong?" my little brother asked me as he walked trough the front door.

I told him nothing was wrong and considered beating him mercilessly for asking.

He threw his back pack in the corner near the ethnic spice rack and lotto kiosk. After grabbing the remote control he turned the store TV from CNN to the Cartoon Network.

"Keep the Volume down to 72." I told him.

"What?" he shout and grinned as the volume maxed out at 99.

Normally, I would reclaim the remote with extreme prejudice and turn down the volume myself, but today I didn't feel like proving that I was stronger then a 12 year old (ALTHOUGH I CERTAINLY AM AND CAN PROVE IT!), so I ignored the blare of the television.

He sensed something was wrong since I wasn't beating him with the closest bag of Basmati Rice and so the joke began "I'm going to tell you a joke to take away your sadness."

"What?!" I replied in protest "Take away my sadness? What makes you think I'm-"

Ignoring me, he began the joke...

"Anybody can ROAST BEEF, HAHAHA" ...and burst into laughter.

"Is that it?" I said, confused.

"NO! NO! WAIT!" he said as he tried to control himself.

"Anybody can ROAST BEEF, HAHAHA" ...again he burst into laughter, bending over and holding his stomach with one hand.

"Yeah, I guess anybody can Roast Beef, but why is that so funny?" I asked.

"NO!" he said, suddenly very serious. "That's not the joke!"

"Alright, then tell me the stupid joke!" I shot back at him, wanting to finish my work before I lost whatever energy I still had left from my morning pots of coffee.

My little brother closed his eyes to concentrate.

I could tell he was focusing, visualizing himself telling me that anyone could ROAST BEEF.

Whatever came after that was still making him giggle slightly, but he maintained his concentration.

"Okay." He said, after taking a deep breath.

"Anybody can ROAST BEEF, but nobody can..."

He paused, either because he wanted to give the punch line more...punch, or because he couldn't remember the next part. Either way I was getting anxious.

"What?! NOBODY CAN WHAT?!" I asked, egger for the punch line of a joke SO funny it makes the person telling it laugh hysterically in the middle and, according to some, can even take away sadness!

"Nobody can...

...PEA SOUP."

(DISCLAIMER: After chasing my brother around the store for twenty minutes and beating him with the closet bag of Basmati Rice, I found out that he didn't come up with the joke himself and mostly likely, "saw it on TV".)