I had a friend from Hamburg last year, an exchange student. At the end of the year, he wrote in my yearbook a short message, his email (I just sent him a mail for the first time a few days ago) and a joke.
Treffen sich zwei Jäger im Wald. Beide tod.
Uh, whoops. Wrong button.
So, I saw this as:
Two hunters meet in the forest. Both dead. (Actually, shouldn’t that be “Beide tot”, not “tod”? “Both death” is what I said.)
I didn’t ask my teacher for an explanation. I wanted the moment that I figured it out to be a mile stone.
So, as I was recently thinking of my favorite Hamburger, I thought again about that joke. I thought:
Gibt es ein Unterschied zwischen treffen und sich treffen?
Is there a difference between ‘treffen’ and ‘sich treffen’?
And I burst into laughter. I remembered that treffen can also mean (only sich treffen?) to HIT, as in punch, or with an arrow, or with a bullet.
Awesome.
Years ago I had a boyfriend who, when called a “Motherf*cker” by someone, would always respond with “You keep your mother outta my yard, and I’ll keep my yard outta your mother!”
Took me about six months (or longer) to figure out what he meant 
Eh, I can remember on numerous occasions I’d be watching “Saturtday Night Live” I’d watch a certain skit thinking at the time “this is just so stupid and not funny” Then the next day at work I’d be thinking about the same skit then for some reason, its all of the sudden, it would be funny to me.
Strangely enough though it wasn’t because I didn’t get the jist of the skit when I first watched it. It just didn’t seem funny.
It took me years to get a certain joke in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.
The ship that Arthur and Ford are on is about to go into hyperspace. Ford explains to Arthur, who has never done it before, that it’s an unsettling experience.
Ford: It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.
Arthur: What’s so wrong about being drunk?
Ford: Ask a glass of water.
It took me about 10 years to get the pun in the Barenaked Ladies song “If I had $1000000”:
I’d buy you some art - a Picasso or a Garfunkel
My mind is wired kind of weird and I frequently fail to get puns; this is just the most egregious example.
¿Qué hace el pez? Nada.
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Phillip Glass.
Since Captain Kangaroo died, I just discovered one of the “in” jokes they played over and over again:
Why did Bunny Rabbit always want carrots? Because his eyesight was so bad (hence the glasses).
Now, how long ago did I first see that joke?
This has happened to me frequently with jokes being told when I’m with a group of people. I hear the joke, and most of the people laugh. I just give a polite chuckle because I get it, but I don’t think it’s that funny. About thirty seconds later, I think, “hey, on second thoughts that’s quite good!”, and let out with a BWAHAHA! Of course everybody thinks it took me that long to get the joke. Bloody embarrassing.
My father made a couple of risque jokes when I was a kid (which I was old enough to ‘get’, but for some reason just didn’t). One was when we hired a beach buggy which had “RENT ME” written on the side, and he thought it hilarious that an attractive woman friend didn’t want to ride it in because of that. Another was the classic “just a little prick with a needle” joke. In both cases a lightbulb came on about a decade later. It also took me a while to work out why Sydney radio announcer Doug Mulray used to sign off with “cop ya later!”, which I thought was just him trying to sound cool.
Wow. I am ashamed. I am a fan of both and I never appreciated the humor in either until reading them just now.
On the other hand, FisherQueen, I love the Phillip Glass joke!
My English instructor is fond of telling this one, especially to drunk people…
What’s the difference between a telephone pole?
A football, because a motorcycle doesn’t have doors.
I nearly fell out of my chair laughing. I think I was the only one in class who got it.
Why is everybody looking at me like that?
When I was about 6 my Dad used to tell me this joke
Knock Knock
Who’s there?
Thistle
Thistle who
Thistle make you laugh
I would then scream my head off laughing (because you laugh when someone tells a joke)
I was 22 before I finally got it …
I know you’re not supposed to explain a joke, but could someone please explain to me the Philip Glass one? I also sat through “Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread” without getting it.
I read a biography on him and listened to a dozen sound bytes on philipglass.com, and I still don’t get it.
Heh. Took me eight years to get this. I was just sitting on a bus, EIGHT YEARS LATER, thinking about something completely different, and suddenly figured out what it meant.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to see the second meaning of “If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?” :o
But to my credit here… Way back in the old days, before we all had web pages - before there was a World Wide Web, chillun - people used to write “ID files” which they would send to other people they talked with on irc, BITnet Relay, and so forth. These were fairly short text files that might mention a person’s real name, where they lived, what they did for fun, that sort of thing. My file included the line: “I wish I could play the piano. This is known as pianist envy.” Took some people weeks to get that one 
Sneed’s Feed and Seed
(Formerly Chuck’s)
That has had to be explained on these boards several times.
I once heard someone ask someone else “How many rats would it take to screw in a lightbulb.”
The answer: Two… But I don’t know how you’d get them in there.
Sadly it was months before I got the joke…
I’m not sure if you mean “I don’t get it” or “I don’t think it’s funny” but the joke is the same as the one about the DJ who put on a Philip Glass record and only noticed an hour later that it was skipping: His music is known for having short repeating (repeating repeating repeating) themes. One good example is Act I Scene 1 (track 2) of Einstein on the Beach (amazon.com link; it has a 30-second clip). It’s not always simple repetition, though, and sometimes several themes are woven together, like “Philip Glass Buys A Loaf of Bread” does. (“Philip needs a loaf of love” :D).
OK, I translated this one and I still don’t get it.