This was posted by Gill Krebs to puns@yahoogroups.com

It’s an unseasonably cold day in Dallas. Two priests who are visiting town for a convention are walking and since they did not bring overcoats, they decide to buy a couple. They go into Nieman Marcus and ask the clerk for two black overcoats. The clerk explains that it’s the off-season for overcoats, but he’ll take a look. All he can find are two navy blue coats of the proper size.

He calls his manager and the manager says, “Hell, sell them the blue coats. On a day like this, they won’t be able to tell the difference.” The clerk does.

The priests are walking again and looking at their new coats. The coats just don’t seem to look right. They pass two nuns and one of the priests asks a nun to hold up the sleeve of her black habit so he can compare the color.

As the nuns are walking away, one of them says to the other, “Isn’t it nice to hear a priest speak Latin in this modern age. I wish I knew what he said.”

The other nun asked, “What did it sound like?”

The first nun replied, “It sounded like he said, ‘Nieman Marcus fuctus’.”

Howell Gwin tells us of an older version of this tale:

In the old version, it was “Marcus screwed us” or “Marcus scrudus” which is better Latin…..