What’s black and white and red all over?
A nun falling down cement stairs.
Anyone remember the “You tell 'em” jokes? They predate me, but the first joke book I got had a whole section…“You tell 'em, operator – you got their number!”
Where’s the best place for the dressmaker to build his store?
On the outskirts of town.
(Boy’s Life - sometime in my youth)
Oldest one I remember, and didn’t get it at the time, but my mom still tells it, her one and only joke ever.
Q: What did the elephant say to the naked man?
A: How do you breathe through that little thing.
The earliest one I can remember, I heard in 3rd grade (age 8 or 9). Once a week we had “Joke Day” in place of Show & Tell. One of my classmates, Kathy, got up and told this joke:
Q: Why did Dairy Queen have a baby?
A: Because Burger King pulled out his Whopper.
The teacher said, “Sit down, Kathy.”
I remember that I didn’t get the joke at the time.
Have you ever seen an elephant in a jelly bean jar?
Hide pretty good, don’t they?
Q: What’s big, green, and coming right at you?
A: A giant stampeding gherkin!
It was in a giant kid’s joke book and came accompanied with a picture of an angry-looking gherkin. I think it explains a lot about my sense of humor.
What do you get when you cross poison Ivy & a 4 leaf clover?
A rash of good luck…
Their was an indian named Chief Bowels and the government was going to put him on
a reservation. Bowels didn’t want to leave. He later went to complain and
they told him, “If you have any complaints go to this place.”
Bowels decided to go there. The indian had no idea what was going to
happen.
She said, “How may I help you?”
“Bowels no move!”
“I’ll have you meet with a doctor soon.”
“What seems to be the problem?”
“Bowels no move!”
“I can give you this, but drink a little!”
Bowels soon came back. “Bowels still no move!”
“I’ll give you some stronger stuff.”
Bowels came back. “Bowels still no move!”
“Man, I’ll give you the strongest stuff we got, if this doesn’t work we’ll
have to operate, and you better stay by the toilet.”
Bowels came back 2 days later and the doctor said, “Well, did bowels move?”
“Yea, Bowels move now… teepee full of crap!”
Q: What’s the difference between a duck?
A: One of its legs is the same.
My grandfather also used to tell me a poem:
Si senor, der dago
Forte lorres inaro
Demsno lorres, demartrux
Si whitsinim
Cusandux
A termite walks into a bar and says, “Is the bar tender here?”
This is the first joke I remember, from about 1973 in elementary school in Texas:
I have no idea where that came from. It isn’t that funny and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, so I suspect it was a childlike adaptation of a more lewd joke.
Still, I’m pleased that it marks the era in which I heard it.
The earliest jokes I can remember are “Mommy, mommy” jokes:
Mommy, mommy, how far is it to America?
Shut up and keep swimming!
Mommy, mommy, I keep running in circles!
Shut up or I’ll nail your other foot to the floor!
Cruel & nasty, the humour of 6 year old boys…
Grim
So this guy decided to build a fireplace. He drew up plans, and figured out exactly how many bricks he’d need. He went to the brick store and bought exactly that many bricks. When he was done building the fireplace, he had one brick left over. He tried to figure out where he went wrong, but he couldn’t. After a while he shrugged his shoulders and threw the brick out the window.
That’s still one of my favorite jokes.
Not the oldest joke I know, but close. I learned it (from my Mom!) as:
Q: Why did Dairy Queen have a baby?
A: Because Burger King forgot to wrap his Whopper.
Kids also told it with this follow-up:
Q: Why couldn’t Dairy Queen have a baby?
A: Because she was married to Mr. Softee.
A kid’s joke book, in 1975. (Old by that time, too.) I don’t remember the name of the book, but I remember that it was much taller than it was wide, and featured a giraffe on the cover. It was printed with a three colour process, black, blue, and red. Anyway, the joke:
Waiter: How did you find your steak, sir?
Customer: It was easy, I just moved the potato aside, and there it was!
Well, there was the whole series of frog jokes:
What’s red and green, red and green?
A frog in a blender
And always the elephant jokes (what was it with elephants, anyway?):
Why do elephants climb trees in the jungle?
To jump on the pygmies
Why are pygmies so short in the jungle?
Because the elephants are always jumping on them.
What’s the most feared sound in the jungle?
Boingy-boingy-boingy…apparently supposedly the sound of elephants jumping out of the trees, you know… All right! I was only five!
Whatever the oldest joke I ever heard was, it is lost in the mists of time. I’m going to have to go with some generic Little Moron joke, back when that wasn’t nearly illegal to say. Isn’t it funny how Little Johnny is almost too smart for his own good, and the Little Moron was on the other end of the IQ scale?
What do a duck and a plum have in common?
They’re both purple… Except for the duck.
What’s brown and sticky?
A stick.
Explain please?
JRB
He threw it out the window! Isn’t it obvious?
There’s this other joke I learned way back then:
A little old lady boarded a bus and took a window seat. She had a dog on her lap. A guy sat down next to her, and was smoking a cigar. The smoke was going right past her nose and out the window.
“Young man, please put your cigar out.”
“No.”
“Put your cigar out right now.”
“No.”
“Young man, if you don’t put your cigar out, I’m going to throw it out the window.”
“Oh yeah? If you throw my cigar out the window, I’m going to throw your dog out the window.”
So she threw his cigar out the window, and he threw her dog out the window. A few stops later, the lady got off of the bus, and her dog came running up to her. Guess what he had in his mouth?
The brick.