When I was a kid, my older brothers told me a joke I didn’t get until high school:
How do you get down off an elephant?
You don’t; you get down off a duck.
This one I didn’t get for a while. :smack:
“My daughter’s going for a cruise.”
“Jamaica?”
“No, she wanted to go.”
The old Bugs Bunny cartoons are full of references to contemporary (I assume Warner Brothers) movies that I didn’t get when I was a kid. A standout for me is a joke on “The Lost Weekend” – a drunk is sitting at a bar, pushing his typewriter towards the bartender, who says “Here’s your change, Mr. Milland” and gives him a bunch of little typewriters in return. (Ray Milland played an alcoholic writer who was always hocking his typeweriter for booze money.)
And, um, this is my first post after 2 years of noble silence.
The old Henny Youngman line “Take my wife… please.”
Heard this plenty growing up but never understood till my late teens.
How long did that take you? About seven years? 
For years I read the comic strip “The Lockhorns” before it occurred to me that the married couple constantly “lock horns” over something.
I don’t get these, and wouldn’t have understood the Superman joke or the one about the two Indian Braves and the bug if they hadn’t been explained. I realize that a joke loses its humor if you have to explain it, but that’s also true if the audience doesn’t understand it. Could we please offer an explanation for the jokes for those of us who won’t get them?
The pick-up line has a play on the words “would you hold it against me?” As in the idiomatic meaning – would you fault me for it – and the literal meaning – would you physically hold your body against mine.
The other two, I have no clue. And the “squash it/squaw shit” pun is awfully difficult to get (especially since I pronounce the two differently.)
As a child, I used to read “children’s” joke books. I’ve since come to the conclusion that most of these “children’s” jokes were simply really really old jokes chosen because they were inoffensive, and probably selected by someone who was old enough to remember why they were funny. There were a number of them that, while indeed inoffensive were also unfunny because they were either anacronistic or out of place. To wit:
“Did you hear about the little girl with her hair in bangs who was always in a bad mood? Her nickname was 'Surly with the fringe on top.”
and
“A snail bought a car and painted a big letter “S” on the side. When he drove it around, the other snails would say, ‘Look at that S car go!’”
I read both of these jokes in grade school, and didn’t get either one until I was out of high school.
When I was in the third grade (about 1974), once a week we had a “joke day” in place of show-and-tell. We could tell a joke instead of showing and telling. So one day, my classmate Kathy stood up in front of the class and told this joke:
Q: Why did the Dairy Queen get pregnant?
A: Because the Burger King pulled out his Whopper.
The teacher calmly said, “Go sit down, Kathy.” Judging by the lack of reaction from my other classmates, I think I wasn’t the only kid in the room who didn’t get the joke. I don’t think Kathy even understood the joke. I think I was in high school when I remembered it, and finally got it.
Good old Officer Shrift in The Phantom Toolbooth.
The day when, thinking back on the book, I went ‘Ooohhh… he’s short!’
If you don’t know what I’m talking about , then read the book. I don’t think you’ll regret it.
Why do you think these aren’t funny or anacronistic? “Surrey with the Fringe On Top” isn’t THAT old of a song. Oklahoma! the movie came out in 1955 and is regularly produced by community theater groups, high-schools, etc. I bought the tape for my children, 9 and 6, and they’d certainly get it. It’s a fun song!
And I don’t think escargots are particularly rare as a dish, are they?
Or am I not getting something? (Which is certainly possible. I didn’t get the “squash it” joke.)
This is from Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the pilot episode, Geordi tells a joke, but all we hear is the above punchline. Data doesn’t get it. Then, in the first movie after he’s put in his emotion chip, Data starts laughing. Geordi asks him what’s so funny, and Data replies that he just got the joke.
I think, perhaps, Phase42 meant that they aren’t jokes a child is likely to get without some explanation. Despite that yours have, I doubt that the majority of children have seen Oklahoma! (heck, I’m 20 and haven’t) or know what escargot is.
I was probably 16 before I realized the pun in the slogan “If it’s Quik, you can’t drink it slow.” I just though they meant if you have Nestles Quik in your milk it’s so good you want to drink it fast. Never got the Quik(quick)/slow thing until one day in the kitchen I was drinking some and it just came to me.
Is there more to this than the idea that the camoflage won’t work in snow? From your excited reaction it seems that there ought to be some other joke to it that I’m missing…
What Garfield226 said. Oklahoma! premiered on Broadway on March 31, 1943, more than a year before my parents were born. And my parents were 11 when the movie came out. The joke book in which I saw the joke in the early '70s was probably published sometime in the '60s, so was probably more “current” then. But in the early '70s, with me being probably 8 or 9 years old, Oklahoma! just wasn’t on my radar. No home VCR back then, and if I ever saw it on TV it probably wouldn’t have registed as something I’d remember, least of all a single song from a musical.
And escargot? Never heard of it until I was in high school. Even if I had heard of it as a child, the pun would probably have gone over my head at that age.
Hey, how about a joke that I read back in high school, and still don’t get at age 38:
Q: Why is there a corner tap on the basilica?
A: So the pope can cash his check, too.
Even the Catholics to whom I’ve told the joke don’t get it :dubious:
The “Eat Me” cake parade float from Animal House. When I was a kid, and to be honest, even a teenager, that was just about cake (and not so funny, either).
:wally
How about the magic spell Bullwinkle casts?
Eeney meaney,
Chili beaney,
the spirits are about to speak!
To which Rocky the Flying Squirrel responds: “Are they friendly spirits?”
Bullwinkle: “Friendly? Just listen.”
It wasn’t until my 40s that I got the joke. My wife and I were talking about the show when she pointed out that “the spirits” invoked by chili beans made it a subtle fart joke. Too subtle for me; I didn’t realize it, and she’s never let me forget it.
A riddle it took me two years to figure out (luckily my age was in the single-digits so I’m not too upset):
Q: “If April showers bring may flowers, then what do may flowers bring?”
A: “Pilgrims.”
:dubious: 
:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :dubious:
Two… whole… years. I still remember where I was when I figured it out: at the old KFC in Bellair Plaza on AIA in Ormond Beach.
:o :mad: :smack:
Okay, my own personal Rocky and Bullwinkle epiphany. 
I didn’t realize till I was in my late 30s that Mr. Peabody was a shaggy dog.
I’m guessing it refers to some Polish men (such as factory workers) who cash their paychecks at the corner tavern and spend some of the money there.