Farmer Jones had a wife who was a terrible, terrible nag. Every time she would talk to him about anything she would nag him and the only way he could get away was to go do some plowing with his old mule in the field.
Needless to say Farmer Jones spent a lot of time walking up and down the fields with his old mule until one day his wife, in a fit of remorse for her nagging ways decided to surprise her husband by fixing him a nice lunch to eat while he was out plowing in the fields.
She took the lunch out to the field, and Farmer Jones was very happy and surprised to see her and hoped that she had finally changed her nagging ways. She hadn’t been out there for ten minutes when she began nagging her poor husband again about something.
During her tirade, she dropped the picnic basket behind the mule and the mule gave her a good swift kick in the head. She fell over dead as a door nail from the mule’s strong kick.
A few days later, at the funeral parlor a couple of friends of Farmer Jones noticed that after the service both men and ladies would come up to Farmer Jones and offer their sympathy and condolences. In each case, Farmer Jones would nod his head up and down when ladies would speak, and would shake his head from side to side when a man-friend would come up to comfort him.
After the service was over, those friends of Farmer Jones went up to him and asked him why he nodded his head for the ladies but shook his head for the men.
“Well”, Farmer Jones said, “when the ladies would come up they would say something like… Isn’t that a lovely dress she is wearing? or “Doesn’t she look natural, just like she is asleep?… and I would nod my head yes in agreement. But when the men came up, they all asked me if I wanted to sell that mule”.