My one joke

[radiantfracture]

My friend T. lives in Scotland, on the island of Iona, mending book bindings, and if that doesn't sound like one possible perfect life, you are a very difficult person to satisfy (or a non-recluse, which is fair.)

For his fortieth birthday, his partner asked his friends to make videos of ourselves telling our favorite jokes, or jokes that reminded us of T. Then she edited our jokes into a supercut.

Even my stony heart is warmed by observing the way T's silly jokes have stayed with people for more than a decade, continents away. People tell jokes they remember T. telling, or their own silly jokes. Their kids, some of which I know, get involved.

Interrupting Cow shows up many times:

--Knock knock.
--Who's there?
--Interrupting cow.
--Interrupting cow wh--
--MOOO

The joke I told is even older than our friendship. I told it because it's my only joke. It goes back to the prehistory of my consciousness. I learned it from my dad, and while it's not a classic dad joke, it has the vibe. It's also a joke that smells of pine trees and white-gas camp stoves, because it's a joke he told us while we were camping.

I did three takes, and by the third take I think I actually understood how to properly tell this joke I've been reciting to mystified audiences for my entire life.

(I know I split that infinitive, but it had to be done.)

THE JOKE

Guy has a mid-life crisis and decides to go skydiving. He takes some lessons, and then finally it's the day of his big jump. He's up in the plane with the instructor. He's nervous. The instructor says "Look, it's simple. You jump out of the plane, you count to ten, you pull the cord on your parachute, it opens. If for some reason it doesn't open, you pull the other cord, and your emergency chute opens. Piece of cake."

So the guy jumps out of the plane. He counts to ten and he pulls the first cord. Nothing happens. No main chute. He starts to sweat. He pulls the other cord. Nothing happens. No backup chute.

Now he's just plummeting through the sky. He starts to pray, to beg the universe, "please, save me, send me a sign, don't let it end this way."

Suddenly he sees a guy rising off the ground towards him.

So he's falling down, and the guy's rising up, and when they get opposite each other, he shouts, "do you know anything about parachutes?" and the other guy shouts back, "no! Do you know anything about Coleman stoves?"

* * * * * *

I don't remember why I loved this joke, or why I remember it so clearly now. Maybe it was because it was confusing to me as a child. (This huge life-or-death setup for that exchange? What happens to the two people? Clearly they both die immediately after this joke ends. How is that funny?) The joke does have a certain strawberry-on-the-cliff cherish-the-moment absurdity.

If you had one joke to carry with you into the afterlife, what would it be?

{rf}

Comments

[sovay]

The joke I told is even older than our friendship. I told it because it's my only joke. It goes back to the prehistory of my consciousness.

I can remember being told it for the first time in middle school. Early in our acquaintance, spatch told me Interrupting Starfish, which works best in three dimensions.

I think the surrealism of the Coleman stove really makes the other one.

I will have to think about taking a joke into the afterlife. I don't tend to tell jokes per se, which means that although I know a fair number of them, I almost never think of them unless reminded by something else; also my family had a habit of abbreviating a joke itself down to its punch line and then using that as an allusion, e.g. "So don't do that!" My grandfather was the only person who consistently told jokes all the way through as a form of cultural transmission. He demontrated to me the workings of the shaggy dog story.

[sperrywink]

A scientist was studying frogs. He placed the frog on the table and said, "Jump, frog, jump!" The frog jumped 4 feet and the scientist recorded this in his research journal.

The scientist cut off one of the frog's legs and sutured the stump. He put the frog on the table and said, "Jump, frog, jump!" The frog jumped 3 feet and the scientist recorded this in his research journal.

The scientist cut off another one of the frog's legs and sutured the stump. He put the frog on the table and said, "Jump, frog, jump!" The frog jumped 2 feet and the scientist recorded this in his research journal.

The scientist cut off another one of the frog's legs and sutured the stump. He put the frog on the table and said, "Jump, frog, jump!" The frog jumped 1 foot and the scientist recorded this in his research journal.

Finally, the scientist cut off the last of the frog's legs and sutured the stump. He put the frog on the table and said, "Jump, frog, jump!" The frog didn't move. He said again, "Jump, frog jump!". Louder he said, "Jump, frog, jump!" The frog didn't move. The scientist record in his research journal, "No legs. Frog now deaf."

[radiantfracture]

Oh science <3

[radiantfracture]

I do not know interrupting starfish. Wait, does it involve putting your hand over someone's mouth?

I love the idea of your grandfather demonstrating the shaggy dog story as he might teach you to ride a bike or drive a car -- essential aptitudes.

[sovay]

I do not know interrupting starfish. Wait, does it involve putting your hand over someone's mouth?

It involves springing suddenly forward like a jumping-jack so that your head, hands, and feet form the five points of the starfish, which especially if the person telling this joke was just leaning quietly up in the doorway a moment ago is hilarious.

[radiantfracture]

That's so much better than I pictured. I'm going to ask T. if he knows the variant.

[bibliofile]

Huh, a joke I don't remember hearing before! Though my youthful camping was more the scouting thing, with cooking on fires and not stoves.

My favorite joke is probably the one where three [disparate characters of your choice] walk into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, "What is this, some kind of joke?" Just meta enough for me.

[radiantfracture]

One of the key qualities of good bad jokes, it occurs to me, is a certain level of self-awareness.

[edenfalling]

Oh gosh, a favorite joke. That's hard!

I have one knock-knock joke I love because it's terrible (the "orange you glad I didn't say banana?" one), a handful of story jokes (most clean, one filthy), and two shaggy dog jokes. Hmm.

Here's one of the clean story jokes:

So there's a guy, let's call him Joe, who's down on his luck: he's short-shifted at work, his wife has health problems, their kids just broke a neighbor's window and the neighbor's going to sue, you name it, they're having problems with it. And he thinks to himself, you know what would make all these problems go away? If I just had some money.

So he goes up onto the roof of the apartment building and he says, "God, I'm a decent person. I try to be kind to everyone I meet, I give blood, I volunteer at the soup kitchen, I give to charity when I have anything to spare. Now my family's in trouble and I really need your help. Can you help me win the lottery?"

And the voice of God comes down from on high and says, "Normally I don't do this kind of thing, but you are a pretty decent person and your family does not deserve the stuff they're going through, so yes, Joe, I'll help you win the lottery."

And Joe goes back downstairs and thinks, oh thank goodness, we're going to be okay.

But he doesn't win the lottery that week.

He doesn't win the lottery next week, either.

The third week passes and he still hasn't won the lottery. His insurance company is breathing down his neck, his credit cards are all maxed out, the suit is going to court tomorrow, and the toilet just broke and he has no money to pay for a plumber.

So he goes back up onto the roof and says, "God, I don't mean to be rude and I know you work on your own schedule, but you did say you'd help me win the lottery. It's been three weeks and nothing's happened. Can you tell me when I should expect the money?"

And the voice of God echoes down from on high and says, very exasperated, "Joe, I need you to work with me here. Buy a ticket."

[radiantfracture]

Nice! It's like a slightly lower-stakes version of "I sent you a news broadcast, a boat, and a helicopter."

[edenfalling]

Yes! I like the flexibility of the stakes, because the depth of Joe's money troubles can be raised or lowered at the joke-teller's discretion.

[radiantfracture]

I love this awareness of the adjustable parameters of the joke.

[sovay]

And the voice of God echoes down from on high and says, very exasperated, "Joe, I need you to work with me here. Buy a ticket."

I just read this to spatch and he laughed. Thank you.

[edenfalling]

:D

[starshipfox]

I love this joke, but I heard it from a Jewish friend, and in her version Joe is Chaim, and the details of his life have a more Jewish flavour. I'm having trouble adjusting to the Joe version!

[edenfalling]

Now that you mention it, I can easily see this joke with a more Jewish flavor, given the tone of the conversations with God. I wonder if that was the original version and I happen to be at the end of a chain of tellers and listeners that gradually modulated it to be more generic American nondenominational deistic?

[starshipfox]

Sounds likely! Jokes certainly change and evolve in the telling.

[mrissa]

But you know the interrupting cow apprentice joke, right:

Knock-knock.
Who's there?
Interrupting cow apprentice.
Interrupting cow apprentice who?
[thoughtful pause] MOOOO.

[radiantfracture]

Okay, I laughed out loud at this.

[mrissa]

\o/

[calimac]

The computer programmer was found dead in the shower, in his hand an empty bottle of shampoo. The label read: "Lather. Rinse. Repeat."

[radiantfracture]

Aw infinite loop tragedy

[cmcmck]

The Scots for 'cow' is 'coo' so being married to a Scot, many potential household jokes arise from things like 'military coup' or 'pulling off a coup' and so on!

[kenjari]

I know a ridiculous number of musician jokes.

What is the difference between a violist and a seamstress?
A seamstress tucks up the frills.

How many guitarists does it take to change a lightbulb?
15. 1 to change the bulb, 14 to stand around saying "I could have done that faster".

[cmcmck]

How many flies does in take to screw in a lightbulb?

Only two, but god knows how they got in there...............

[edenfalling]

Ha! :)

[radiantfracture]

Excellent semantic slippage.

[radiantfracture]

Excellent spoonerism.

I had a bassist friend with endless bassist jokes, none of which I cam remember.

[oracne]

That sounds like an absolutely wondrous birthday gift.

[starshipfox]

My family are very into Limericks, all of which are *shockingly* dirty, and yet I picked them all up as a smallish child.

The cleanest one is:

There was a young man from the coast
Who received by the afternoon post
A nebulous parcel
Containing the arsehole
And balls of his grandfather's ghost.

Your friend T. absolutely has the ideal life! And I love Interrupting Cow. My wife is Polish and was unfamiliar with Interrupting Cow, so got to learn it from me shortly after our wedding. She gave me some pretty hard side-eye.

[radiantfracture]

Wow. That is both a filthy limerick and the beginning of a horror novella.

The cleanest one, you say.

My family had a secret book of dirty limericks on a shelf in an office (it was probably a gift, as they were unfortunately not a tradition in our family).

[starshipfox]

I really like the surrealism of the nebulous balls. The rest of them are mainly about various sex acts. We never had a book though!

[carbonel]

My favorite easily repeatable joke is one I picked up from a friend of my father, which I guess makes it a sort of dad joke.

What do you get when you kiss a bird?

Chirpes

(pause)

Which is a canareal disease.

(pause)

And it's untweetable.

[radiantfracture]

Untweetable definitely makes this.