When I was quite young (details foggy here) my mother did something I thought was clever, and I asked “How did you do that?” Her reply was to tap her temple and say, “Kidneys, my boy. Kidneys” In response to my puzzled look she elaborated, “That’s the punchline of a joke.”
“Oh. Tell me the joke”
“Um, I forget”
It’s been decades and she still doesn’t remember the joke. This bugs me. I do the temple-kidneys thing with my own kids, perpetuating the intergenerational angst.
Help me ease my family’s suffering: What joke has the punchline “Kidneys, my boy. Kidneys”?
I think the basic idea is that someone who is otherwise considered to be a total dipstick correctly identifies and locates several body parts (e.g. femur, ulna, collarbone).
When asked how this seemingly impressive task was accomplished, the total dipstick errantly points to the head and says, …
Maybe I should try to write my own setup. I always imagined the joke would entail hilarious miscommunication at a butcher’s shop (or maybe better: a chef, involving headcheese and/or steak & kidney pie).
Now that has a ring to it. The “mental competency test” stories may have been attempts to construct a joke setup after the phrase itself had already caught hold.
I needed a human kidney for a stage prop for a show.
I couldn’t get a real human kidney so I needed to come up with a good fake. I put a potato inside a red condom. Went over pretty well actually.