I don’t know what you plan to do with yours, but I’m going to spend the $600 of my money that President Bush and Congress are sending back to me on gasoline, heating my house, paying medical and insurance bills or for other things that all of us need, but which have become too expensive or hard to get, because they were supposed to be running this country but have spent too much time arguing with each other and not doing their damn jobs.

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The e-mails my friends send to me at the newspaper take many forms. Some of it moves or angers me, or makes me proud to be an American, and I often laugh and marvel at the ingenuity that’s involved.

I frequently wonder how much truth there is in it. As a professional newspaperman, I know that the lack of truth in a story doesn’t keep it from being a great story. The difference is that — unlike some of the so-called “journalists” who infest TV, magazines and even newspapers — I wouldn’t knowingly pass it off as true.

With that in mind, here’s an item e-mailed to me by a couple of my friends. I won’t vouch for its veracity, but it is a great story and would be even better if it actually is true:

A U.S. Navy admiral was attending a naval conference that included admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian and French navies.

At a cocktail reception, everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks, but a French admiral suddenly complained that, “Europeans learn many languages, but Americans learn only English.” He then asked, “Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?”

Without hesitating, the American admiral replied, “Maybe it’s because the English-speaking peoples arranged it so you wouldn’t have to speak German.”

You could have heard a pin drop.

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Like my pal next door, Maude McDaniel, I like to share stories that explore the way some human minds function — the girl who didn’t know how to make hot dogs to go, or the clerk who didn’t have foot-long hoagies ... all they had was 12-inch and 24-inch, or the guy who twisted and turned the restroom doorknob and yanked vigorously upon it, to no avail, before asking, “Is somebody in there?”

Here’s another example.

I was making my way back from the donut store with a peanut butter bun in my pocket when I passed another store where two guys were standing and mumbling to each other. They had just gotten out of a delivery van of some kind I didn’t recognize.

It was around 10 a.m., and they were looking at a sign on the door that said the store was open from 10 a.m. to whatever that day.

“You think they’re open?” one of them asked.

“I dunno,” said the other one. “What’s the sign say?”

“It says they open at 10 o’clock. What time is it?

“It’s just about 10. Whaddya think?”

As I was walking past, I almost turned to them to ask, “Why don’t you try the ******* door?”

But there were two of them, and even though I was bigger than either of them, they were both younger than I was, and my knee was bothering me and they probably could have caught me, so I just kept quiet and walked on.

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It’s been encouraging to hear other folks say they don’t like getting up in the morning.

I was doing all right getting up, but then we had to set the clocks forward an hour so it will stay light an hour later in the evening. That’s fine, but it also means it will take an hour longer for daylight to arrive in the morning.

With Daylight Saving Time in effect, it’s like having to get up an hour earlier, and that’s just not working for me. It’s dark when I go to bed, so I want it to be daylight when I get up.

And no, I don’t expect you to feel sorry for me. I know you may have to get up at 0-dark-30 to go do real work, and there were times I loved to get up early to go hunting or fishing.

But I have never been a morning person, and the only thing worse than not being a morning person during the early morning is to be around someone who is, and is happy and gabby and full of joy and who doesn’t give a damn if everyone else is miserable, so long as they know he is at his best and wanting to be everyone’s ray of sunrise.

One of the reasons I looked forward to summer vacation when I was in school was not that I hated school, but because it gave me a chance to sleep in.

One summer a woodpecker found the brown-painted metal downspout just outside my bedroom window and thought it was a tree.

My father told me, “Not only are woodpeckers protected in this state, but we’re inside the city limits and there’s a hospital on one side of our house and a church on the other. You are NOT going to shoot it.”

Eventually, the bird gave up and went away, presumably with his ... pecking implement ... somewhat blunted.

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You know how I occasionally tell you there are some things you simply cannot explain to someone who doesn’t already understand them?

Well, in a recent letter to Dr. Fox (the Animal Doctor), a reader asked why “a female cat became very aggressive after a petting session.”

Need I say more?

Happy Spring. Have a nice day.