Years ago I had a nose job, and as I am bad with needles and blood (especially my own), I was extremely nervous. The anesthesiologist was about to set up an IV to put me out, and one of the nurses, in an effort to distract me, asked,
“What does your husband do for a living?”
I said, “He’s a lawyer.”
She asked, “Oh, what kind of law?”
“Medical malpractice.”
The whole operating room broke up.
Several years ago, my daughter was sitting at a table with me, working on her geometry homework. This was not her favorite subject, and the teacher was lousy. At one point she was exasperated and said out loud “I just don’t know what this is. What’s an Apothem?” I waited for a beat and then lisped “It’th an animal that liveth in the woodth.” She almost fell out of her chair laughing.
But she got me back.
We were in Chicago, coming out of a theater after seeing “Over The Hedge.” I was commenting on William Shatner voicing one of the opossum characters. She slipped in a non-sequitur “I bet he doesn’t like geometry.”
“Huh?”
“Think about it, Dad.”
It took me several minutes to catch my breath from laughing.
At my sisters wedding, many moons ago, the MC was introducing various members of the two families. He had introduced the parents and grandparents along with mentioning how long they had all been married. After the intros, the MC then turned to the newlyweds and told them the parents and grandparents had over 200 years of married experience, and if they had any questions they knew who to ask for advice. My response “And even if you don’t want any advice, you’ll get it anyways.”
I worked in a warehouse where we would start at 4:00am unloading trucks. Once emptied, we would go home. At a staff meeting, our unit manager was complaining about how we had to sort a certain number of pieces per hour to reach targets (and for him to get a big honking bonus) when a coworker asked “So you want us to work harder so we get less money?”
With the recent outbreak of swine flu, at a staff meeting the manager was talking about how to avoid when one comedian piped up “Just don’t fuck pigs.” to which I replied “I don’t fuck pigs, I make love to them.” Stolen from the Wanted graphic novel.
Don’t think badly of me, but I can’t resist the opportunity to make smart remarks when the occasion presents itself. So…
When, by way of trying to pick me up, the idle barfly asked me how many men I’d slept with, I said,
‘Can’t tell you offhand. I’ll have to check my accounts.’
Yet I never seem to have any money.
Back in college, my dorm would have a movie night every Thursday. While I typically didn’t have time to go, I attended a few. One night they were showing the entire Evil Dead trilogy, which I hadn’t seen before (and was practically the only one in the room who hadn’t, apparently.)
Now in the first movie, there’s a scene where one of the main females gets attacked and raped by a tree. It’s a fairly disturbing scene on many levels. I blurt out "Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘Getting wood.’ "
Senior year I met the woman who would become my ex-wife. It was spring break and being a broke college student, I stayed in Chicago and was doing the free museums and CSO rush tickets thing. My friend was on a trip with a group to the Field Museum, so I joined with him. The woman was the only one around our age, so we three broke off from the main group to explore around on our own. One of the exhibits had displays wired to sensors that would activate the lights in the displays as you approached. So we’re walking through the exhibit and I’m up ahead looking at one display, by friend is looking at another, and the woman, is examining a third, one of those floor mounted types, which didn’t light up as she approached.
Curious as to why that was the only one that hadn’t lit up as someone approached, she says “Why is this exhibit dark?”
Not missing a beat I look right at her and deadpan “Because the light’s not on.”
Sometime during our marriage, we’re out driving and she sees a local donut shop coming up and realizes she suddenly has a yearning for a donut. So we drive in the lot to discover it’s closed. She mentions how disappointed she is and I say:
“I bet that hurts, don-ut?”
Then this one is not what I said, but what went through my mind. My girlfriend is a law student in the second semester of her second year. She has been considering her options after graduation, and she’s thinking of signing up for the Air Force Reserves Judge Advocate General corps. So she was telling me a bit about what it would be like as a “Part-Time JAG Off”. Well, she actually said Officer, but the mature adult side of me had just been blindsided by the 12-year-old boy side and at that point she just gave up trying to tell me the rest.
This will surprise exactly no one, but this sort of thing is kind of my stock in trade.
Typically, my quipping tendencies get expressed around the gaming table, playing some RPG or another.
One of the recent ones…
My friend Eric is generating a character for the Rippers RPG. Rippers is set in the late 1800s, and the players take on the roles of hunters of the supernatural. Think League of Extraordinary Gentlemen meets the X-Files.
Eric’s new character is described as an Australian archaeologist who favors a fedora. This leads to a series of jokes around the table pertaining to Indiana Jones, Crocodile Dundee, and the Crocodile Hunter. “Crikey, look at that bouldah trap. Let’s pick up this idol, and see what happens!” “That’s not an ahk, (ark), THIS is an ahk!”
But the capper was yet to come. The character’s name was revealed as Paul Hitchens, and I wanted to know if he had a manly adventure alias.
Me : “So, ‘Queensland’ Hitchens? ‘New South Wales’ Hitchens? ‘Tasmania’ Hitchens?”
Eric : “Actually, he’s from Victoria…”
Me : “‘Victoria’ Hitchens it is, then! Not very masculine…”
Everyone lost it.
One from our dear daughter, Moon Unit - she was 9 or 10 at the time. This was a year or two after my mother had died.
Her: “Mom, I don’t want you to die!”.
Me: “Don’t worry. I’m going to live to a really really old age, then come live with you and make your life miserable”.
Her: “I changed my mind”.
As much backtalk as that kid can give sometimes, when she sasses us just right, it leaves us howling!
One of mine: Many years ago, I was having lunch with Typo Knig and his whole team in grad school. Someone talked about having visited Spain and I must have made some comment. He turned to me and asked “Oh, have you been to Spain?”.
I said “No, but I’ve been to Oklahoma!”. (youtube link).
Then there was Three Mile Island. The accident there was in the national news while I was in college in another state (I’m from Harrisburg, PA, so it was obviously of some concern).
I walked into a room where a group of folks (including Typo Knig) were evidently discussing it. Just as I entered the corner to enter the room, one of the guys was saying “… mutant cows from Harrisburg”.
I said “Oom?”. The room broke up.
Traffic Ticket School, back in the days before you could do it online and before they updated the materials:
There was a drawing of a guy driving a convertible who’s following closely behind another car in the rain. The activity is to give a list of things that the various drivers are doing wrong (e.g. following too closely, not having headlights on, etc.)
The instructor asks for volunteers to throw out some suggestions of what’s wrong with the picture. I throw out “You mean other than the fact that the guy is driving in pouring rain in a convertible with the top down?”
Later I discovered from a friend that he had asked a similar thing when he had taken the class.
This is exactly the story I would have told, but with me it was leaving a UW Hockey game probably 25 years ago. Though at the time I was somewhat shy, I was actually the one who started mooing. Waves of laughter.
[edit: I think I might recognize someone off-board from what they posted in this thread but decided to take it to PM instead]
Around a Champions RPG our heroes were ambushed and woke in a clearing tied to the ground. The GM said that we heard the rumble and stampede of a large group of elephants barrelling down on us. I blurt out “Elephants on Parade”.
My favorite example:
My ex-husband and I drove past a KFC and there was a sign advertising their pot pies. Ex says “Too bad their pot pies have peas.” (He doesn’t eat peas). I replied, “What would a pot pie be without peas? Oh, an Ot Ie, I guess.”
The best part was the superhuman effort he used in trying NOT to laugh, and failing miserably. Cracked me up much more than it should have, I suppose.
Same husband, different day. We’re doing some grocery shopping and he asks me how many cases of bottled water he should buy. I answered “Get 3, cause the kids go through them like water.” I proceeded to laugh hysterically at myself, and he just shook his head. “That’s not funny,” he muttered. An older woman in the aisle was laughing herself silly and said, “Oh yes it is!”
But probably one of the best reactions I ever got was when arguing with my boss at the time, who was infamous for his short temper. The topic came up, and he said, quite vehemently, “I do NOT have a temper!” “Yeah,” I answered, “That’s because you keep losing it.” The entire office lost it.
My son, about 5, once got under the table to pick up some change he spotted there, and bumped his head as he stood up. “Knock any sense in?” I asked him (my standard response). He opened his fist to show me two pennies and smirked. “Only 2,” he said.
We were discussing default values in our user interface. The lead developer, a little frustrated said:
LD: "The customer just needs to tell us and we’ll make it anything he wants. We’ll make it zero, negative forty-two, pi -
Me (interupting): Don’t be irrational.
Boss was trying her best to quiet down the meeting room before we began the all-hands meeting, and the biggest kiss-ass kept pestering her with “can I get you some coffee? how about more water? No? would you rather have a soda, shall I draw the blinds or…” at which point she thundered “You really know how to suck up to a superior, don’t you?” He loudly protested “I do NOT!” and I couldn’t resist adding “Well, it’s high time you learned.” Half a hundred voices erupted in laughter and cat calls, and the boss has rewarded my humor ever since.
Not me, but in the mid-80’s When my family and I were visiting Mazatlan. While having lunch at the Playa Mazatlan one day, we were watching this young guy trying to sell parasail rides. Two little old ladies came wandering by when the seller walked up to them and loudly asked “Hey ladies, wanna get high?”
This one is just 20 days old. Mrs. Dvl is going through a Caesarean (or, rather, the little Dvl is coming out via Caesarean). Our first dude, an unexpected procedure, nerves are a bit frazzled to say the least.
Putting aside all the myriad non-germane Wow-What-a-Miracle bits, he pops out, then the nurses bring me over to check him out in his first moments, cut the chord, etc. This the first time I come around the curtain and am now about ten feet from her feet, utterly engrossed in checking out The Dude.
A bit of movement catches my eye, I turn to look and suddenly there’s my wife, all opened up, exposed, and with her insides exposed. Whoa.
My first response was a slightly incredulous “those aren’t supposed to be on the outside!” After a slight pause I did my best to channel Gene Wilder/Young Frankenstein: “Put the entrails back.”
It didn’t bring the house down but it got a mixture of chuckling & groans from all who heard it, including myself…
A co-worker hadn’t heard the whole deal about Roman Polanski, so I explained it to him, concluding with “The only reason at all to go easy on him is that the woman involved wants to put it all behind her…
oh
my
God. I did not mean it that way!”
P.S. This was just last night.
When I was in the Navy, at one of my duty stations it was the custom for all the Chief Petty Officers to meet at the galley and have lunch together at the same long table. It was a good practice because you could chat with your peers about something and get some assistance across a spectrum of skills. The Command Master Chief (senior enlisted guy) always sat at the head of the table. He was somewhat full of himself and would often make comments about his skills or personality plus that would have folks rolling their eyes.
One day he finished his meal and stood up and said, “A great man is leaving you.” I had recently read a line somewhere and it was a perfect rejoinder, but I’m pretty reticent to make disparaging comments about anyone so I meant to say it only to my best friend sitting to my left. There is a rhythm and flow to noise in a cafeteria or auditorium, you may notice it sometime. The roar will swell and die off and swell again. At the moment I turned to my friend to make my comment the noise in the room, by happenstance, died off to nothing; so when I said “One man’s ego trip is another man’s comic strip”, it carried perfectly to every ear on the table, including the Master Chief’s. There was a stunned silence around the table and then everyone fell out with huge guffaws. The Master Chief wasn’t amused and he walked away somewhat stiffly.
After that I was never high on the ranking list.
Reminds me of a epically failed joke-killer from some time back.
We were talking about Chabad Houses in space (it’s my conviction that, should scientists discover life on Mars, the first Chabad Mitzva Rocket will arrive ten minutes later). I was tired and feeling serious.
“…Chabad of Uranus…” said my brother.
I really wan’t in the mood for a round of Uranus jokes, so I decided to kill the subject before the inevitable punchline. “Yes, but the Chabad of Uranus would be the butt of too many jokes, so… wait, did I just really say that?”
The family still won’t let me forget it.
I know we’re not awarding prizes for these, but there sure are more than a few that caused me to LOL.
Thanks for the laughs!
Q