Here’s a Canadian joke I remember hearing in the mid to late 70’s when I was in grade school …
Did you hear that Pierre Trudeau built a patio and Margaret laid the stones.
I didn’t get it until many years later when I read about rumours from that time period that Margaret Trudeau (his wife) was supposedly quite ‘friendly’ with Mick Jagger.
I also remember reading a joke in that same time period that was something along the lines of …
A woman who just had triplets was talking to another lady.
The lady says ‘Triplets, my that’s quite unusual’
The mother says 'Yes, they only happen 1 in n (I forget the number but it was big) times
The lady replies “Oh my dear, how did you ever get any housework done”
One day, many years later, I remembered this joke and got it
Lastly, one of my fav jokes to tell people which not everyone gets is this
Two termites walk into a bar. One termite turns to the other termite and asks ‘Is the bartender here’
When I was about 6 or 7, a friend told me a pop culture joke that I did not get, but made the mistake of repeating to my mom. She did not find it funny.
“Why did Lee Majors fire his plumber? He was screwing the wrong faucet.”
Around 11 or 12, my mom decided I was old enough to handle what she considered a pretty raunchy joke. I didn’t get it until a few years later.
“What is the definition of a bad housewife? Someone who cooks her carrots and peas in the same pot.”
In my defense, on the latter one, I had a really nasty mind, and given my mom’s preamble, I think I was searching for a really filthy interpretation.
In the John Sayles movie Brother from Another Planet, the final shot shows the black alien (who is an escaped slave from another planet) riding away in a subway, to which other escaped aliens had directed him. It didn’t hit me until later that it was an Underground Railroad.
I heard this as a child, didn’t get it at all, and forgot about it until many years later.
Q: Why did the snowman drop his pants?
A: Because he heard the snowblower was coming.
I remember all the kids laughing and have to wonder how many of them actually got it and how many (like me) just laughed to be polite while thinking “huh?”
I remember repeating this exchange to my parents, but not really getting it. They laughed but were shocked. I was maybe twelve. I think I finally got it when I was in my 20s.
“What are you doin’?”
“Watching a horror movie on TV.”
“A horror movie?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh wow, is that Jane Fonda?”
“No, a horror movie! You know, like the scary kind!”
My friend in high school did a “Hooked on Phonics” parody that took me over a year to get.
“If you can spell, you can learn to speak Spanish.”
“?Eso si que es?”
Since I was taking Spanish classes at the time, I heard it as Spanish and didn’t get the joke. It was pure nonsense to me. I finally realized that he was spelling S-O-C-K-S. Felt like the biggest idiot on the planet.
I read this one on the jokes page of Electric Company magazine when I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade, circa 1978 or so:
“Where does the king keep his armies?”
“Up his sleevies!”
I don’t remember where I was when I got it, but I was definitely in my late teens, and it was a real “OH!” moment. I probably walked into a telephone pole I was so momentarily stunned…
The list of MAD references that I DIDN’T get as a child would fill a book of its own. I read the magazine religiously for several years (along with CRACKED and CRAZY…and BEANO when I visited my Brit friends) and in hindsight I must have failed to understand probably half of the content.
Movies that I read the satires of (mainly in seasonal reprints) and didn’t understand until YEARS later when I finally saw the films and/or was old enough to get the spoofs:
Dog Day Afternoon
Raging Bull
Apocalypse Now
Clockwork Orange
The Great Escape
The Graduate
…geez, and probably at least a dozen more.
Then, there are a bunch of movies that I am familiar with essentially ONLY because of the MAD satires that I read as a child, including
Any Rocky film (nope, never seen 'em)
Rambo
Shaft
Officer and a Gentleman
Grease
…and yet, I “learned” enough from these satires to be able to catch and process a lot of the common pop culture references that arise about them in other contexts, e.g. “Aaaaadrian!!!” etc.
Mad satires were also the only places I ever saw the artwork of Al Capp, and the Katzenjammer and Snuffy Smith strips…
Oedipus, wearing sunglasses and begging, is calling, “Give to Oedipus! Give to Oedipus!”
Mel Brooks and Gergory Hines walk by, and Oedipus shouts, “Hey, Josephus!”
Gregory Hines slaps him five and mutters under his breath, “Hey, motherfucker…”
Now, I saw this in the theater when I was nine and probably saw it at least two dozen times since. Hell, I understood the “pack of Trojans” line when I was twelve.
But I’ll be damned if I wasn’t in my twenties before I finally got the Oedipus joke…
The episode of Seinfeld where Mr. Lippman opens the muffin top shop (“Top Of The Muffin To You”) and is getting pointers from Elaine on how to make the muffin tops (you gotta make the whole muffin then tear off the tops). At the end of the scene Elaine says “And it’s not 'Top of the Muffin TO YOU!!!” To which Mr Lippman replies “Yes! It is!”
About a year later I saw the earlier episode where she was working for him at Pendant publishing and she was editing the book that had way too much punctuation in it…
As a kid, I’d often hear as an answer “Instant Elephant”, which made more sense to me then, but wasn’t really very funny. I had the true meaning explained to me as a freshman at college. At the same time, I was told another joke, which I wouldn’t have gotten before that explanation:
Q: Why does Dr. Pepper come in bottles?
A: Because his wife died.