First joke I remember reading:
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Dwayne.
Dwayne who?
…Dwayne the tub, I’m dwowning!
First joke I remember being told:
Older kid on the school bus: “What happened the night the lights went out in Georgia?”
Me: “I don’t know, what?”
Older kid (pulling my stocking cap down over my eyes): “It got dark!”
[I never liked that kid.]
Which one - the Herman one or the Viper one? (I wouldn’t want to inflict both of them on people.)
<insert obligatory old zombie joke here>
Funny, NPR’s Dinner Party Download opened the show with that joke this past Saturday.
I remember reading this one in my Mom’s high school yearbook, circa 1920:
Little Audrey’s brother told her about a bed that was 5 feet wide by 10 feet long, and she just laughed and laughed, because she knew that was a lot of bunk.
One of Bennett Cerf’s books had a passage on really old jokes. He introduced this as “one of the very first”:
A lion walks up to a mouse.
The lion roars, “Why aren’t you big and strong, like me?!”
The mouse answers, “Gosh, man, I’ve been sick!”
I don’t get it either. But Cerf explained that “shaggy dog stories”, in which animals simply talked and displayed other human traits, were once considered funny.
The message I took away was that humor ages quickly.
In grade school, I used to love funny book titles, such as:
Over the Cliff by Hugo First
Revenge of the Cat by Claude Bottom
Wet Sheets by I.P. Nightly
How to Get Rich by Robin Banks
The Bad Fall by Eileen Dover
Why Thog walk over there?
Over there not here.
It would either be a knock-knock joke or an elephant joke.
The older version of that is ‘by the footprints in the butter.’ Are you old enough to remember when refrigerators came with a butter nook in the door where the butter was heated slightly to keep it spreadable?
What’s the difference between an elephant and a grape?
Grapes are purple.
What did Tarzan say when he saw the elephants coming?
Here come the elephants.
What did Tarzan say when he saw the elephants coming wearing sun glasses?
Nothing. He didn’t recognize them.
What did Jane say when she saw the elephants coming?
Here come the grapes. (She was colorblind.)
[You had to do those in a series. This next one isn’t in the series.]
What did the grape say when the elephant stepped on it?
Nothing. It just let out a little wine.
Thog’s not here!!!
“10 Miles To The Outhouse” by Willie Maykit and Betty Woant
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Interrupting cow.
Interrupting cow wh . . .
MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Te earliest one I remember is “Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side!”
Beginning with an anti-joke like that wasn’t a good start. It left me confused about what exactly a joke is all about.
Kid: Teacher, what part of body is the fray?
Teacher: The fray? I don’t know!
Kid: But this book says the general was shot in the thick of the fray!
Why this joke has stuck with me for 40 years is beyond me.
Then you wouldn’t have enjoyed the decorative plaque I saw for sale at a craft fair last year.
*I yearn for the day that a chicken can cross the road
Without its motives being questioned. *
At age 5, me to my mother (as repeated from learning minutes before):
“Hey mom, why is a fire engine red?”
“I don’t know honey, why is a fire engine red?”
“Because if someone was pulling your hose around all day long you’d be red too!”
Took years to understand her reaction. Therefore this is the first joke I remember.
“Russian Revenge” by Hubitcher Kockoff.
From a joke book when I was a kid:
"What did one carrot say to the other carrot?
Silly one. Carrots can’t talk."
From the same joke book:
Boy: What are shoes made of?
Cobbler: Hide.
Boy: What?
Cobbler: Hide.
Boy: What?
Cobbler: Hide! Hide! The cow’s outside!
Boy: I’m not afraid of a cow.
I swear those were really in a joke book. I never said it was a good joke book.
This isn’t old, but I love it anyway, because my youngest daughter was about 4 when she made this one up:
Why was the cat afraid of the mouse?
Because it didn’t have a brain!
Just imagine your four year old daughter saying that, and then she laughs. That’s why it’s special.