When I was a kid, I loved joke and riddle books. I would check everyone of them out of the school library as well as the public one.
I would read them end to end, usually in one sitting, and couldn’t wait for more. However, there were always a few (they were REALLY old ones) that didn’t make any sense at the time. Here’s two:
A man on the street asks a passerby:
“Excuse me, sir, how do you get to Carnegie Hall?”
Man: “Practice, man, practice”
As a kid growing in the southeast, I didn’t know what Carnegie Hall was!
Another one:
Sign on a nuclear scientist’s office door:
“Gone Fission”
How the heck is an 8-year-old supposed to know anything about nuclear power?
Of course, I also thought that TBA in the TV Guide listings was the name of a show!! (It was definitely popular. (ha, ha)
One night, when I was about six, I couldn’t get to sleep, so I got up and watched a movie on TV with my parents for a while. It was some sort of science-fiction comedy, and the scene I walked in on involved a fire in the cargo hold of the spaceship. There was a guy, trying to put out the fire, and getting the hose all tangled, and the camera panned across the hold, showing barrels labeled “EXPLOSIVE”, then “DYNAMITE”, then “BRILLIANT”, then finally, “MUST SEE”. My parents broke up in laughter, but I didn’t get it. Several years later, as a more sophisticated teenager, I suddenly remembered this while I was walking down the street. And I got it! I stopped right where I was and started laughing. Everyone must have thought I was completely off my rocker.
Also, this isn’t exactly a joke, but there needs to be a word for the expression on a child’s face when he or she realizes for the first time what the line “She told me to come, but I was already there” from the AC/DC song really means.
Modest? You bet I’m modest! I am the queen of modesty!
When I was nine or ten a neighbor, who was a much more sophisticated twelve or thirteen, told me a joke that I didn’t get at all. When I asked him to explain it, he told me to ask my dad.
Well, of course I decided to ask my dad at the Sunday dinner table with my grandparents in attendance. Here’s the joke:
What’s gray and comes in quarts? An elephant.
My dad laughed so hard that milk sprayed from his nose. Mom kicked me in the shin so hard I still feel it on humid days. Of course, once I was twelve, I tried to tell that joke to as many nine year olds as I could find.
Do songs count? I was 8 when the song “Afternoon Delite” was popular and I always thought it was literally about snacks.
Years went by and I bought a compilation CD of songs from the 1970s. “Afternoon Delite” was on it and I thought “Wow! I haven’t heard that song in 20 years!” Well, I about fell out of my chair when I heard it and realized what it was REALLY about!
MaryAnn
Sometimes life is so great you just gotta muss up your hair and quack like a duck!
Once again, a song, not a joke. I got a copy of “Purple Rain” for Christmas (on vinyl, no less–still have it) when I was 8.
I remember listening to the song “Let’s Go Crazy” and thinking that someday, when this whole sex thing becomes less of a mystery, I’ll understand what Prince means by “Let’s look for the purple banana 'till they put us in the truck.”
16 years, two years of med school, and a fair amount of experience with the “whole sex thing”, and I’m still not really sure.
Dr. J
(who has no need to look for his purple banana–it’s right here)
I grew up listening to the Blues Brothers album Briefcase Full of Blues in my dad’s car. There’s one song (can’t think of the title just now) which is chock full of innuendo, which I didn’t understand as a small child (like ages 5-12) but then I figured it out and was fairly shocked.
The worst example is: “Hunny, you know I gave up cigarettes for my New Year’s Resolution…but I didn’t give up smokin’!”
Ok, maybe I’m REALLY slow but I heard this one when I was about 5 or 6 and didn’t get it until just a few years ago (warning: sick joke ahead):
Guy goes to a whorehouse and wants a BJ, but he only has $5
Madame tells him to go to the dark room at the end of the hall
Guy does and explains that he’s there for a BJ, and the girl goes to work. He starts yelling about it being too rough, so she excuses herself. When she comes back she goes right to work, and after about a minute stops to ask if it’s better.
“Oh, yes, much better” the guy replies “What did you do?”
“Oh”, She replies “I picked the scabs”
I didn’t get that until I overheard a conversation in BurgerKing between two prostitutes- one was talking about having some of her teeth pulled by a dentist “client” of hers… ewww, icky!
Masa Gatsu Agatsu Katsu Hayabi.
True victory is victory over the self; Let that day arrive quickly.
I read it in Boy’s Life years ago when I was a Cub Scout (I swear to GOD!):
Q. What’s a mistress?
A. Halfway between a mister and a matress.
A friend of mine in high school told me that when she was six or seven, she asked her father, “Dad, what’s a tuba?” His answer: “The square root of a four-ba.” Five years later she starts giggling during a math class.
From The Scholastic Book of Jokes and Riddles (can’t remember the year, but it has to be three decades ago):
Q. What’s the longest word in the English language?
A. antidisestablishmentarianism. (28 letters)
HUH???
Engineerboy, I would not take it as being that she had had her teeth pulled (though I guess it could be). I would interpret it more as she had herpes, cold sores, or some type of infected mouth disease that would have scabs that would be rough and picking them would make the guy more likely to catch the disease.
My Dad did a 6-month stint as Chief Medical Officer on The USS David R. Ray. When he got back he gave my sister (age 8) and me (age 10) T-shirts that said:
“Any day is chicken-chokin’ day on the USS David Ray.”
It had a funny cartoon picture of a guy with his fist around the neck of a very surprised chicken.
We must have had those shirts for 3 years; and I didn’t realize the connotation of ‘chicken-choking’ until my late teens.
ST777:
[[light ribbig / sarcasm metatag on]]
Seriously- does it matter? Is one nasty oral affliction that a hooker can pick at to make a blowjob feel less scratchy, less disgusting (or, well, more) than any other? -or-
Thank you for the safe sex lesson
[[light ribbing / sarcasm metatag off]]
What makes this joke REALLY sick is that I went around for about, oh, ten years before gaining any grasp of the sheer magnitude of nastiness involved with a hooker picking scabs in her mouth before giving a BJ.
I say again : ewww, icky!
Engineerboy
I’m pretty sure this is child abuse of some kind
I also remember having a revelation about “Afternoon Delight”. I used to sing that all the time as a kid- no clue at all.
I also never heard the end of “There once was a Man from Nantucket” until about 3 years ago.
Some mornings it just doesn’t seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps. Zettecity
My father has a habit of telling me dirty jokes - he started when I was about five. Luckily, I interpreted the jokes as an innocent child and didn’t think of my father as a sicko until my late teens. (See why Uke and Flora are such great parents?)
This is one example:
A man with one arm applies for a job in the Navy as a cook. The Commander looks at the resume and likes it, but isn’t convinced the One Armed Man (OAM) can cook for a whole fleet. So the Commander says, “Look, I’d like to hire you, but I need some assurance that you’ll actually be able to handle the cooking. Let’s go down to the kitchen so you can demostrate your skills.”
So they go to the kitchen and the OAM decides to make a pizza. He’s able to slice up the mushrooms, grate the cheese and stir the sauce. All of a sudden, he takes off his shirt and flattens out the dough by pounding it to his hairy chest.
The Commander is disgusted and yells, “Do you have any idea how unsanitary and gross that is?! That is the most vile way of making a pizza I’ve ever imagined!” And the OAM replies, “If you think that’s gross, wait until you see the way I make doughnuts!”
End of joke.
Well, of course I thought he was talking about making the hole with his nose (you know, boogers) but at some point (many years later) figured out the “real” meaning.
Being named Sara, as I child I always heard the knock knock joke that ended with “Sara (Is-there-a) Doctor In the House?” I thought at the time that there was an awful lot of pressure to become a doctor when I had yet to begin kidnergarten.
