# What's the Longest It's Taken You to Get a Joke? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 18, 2008, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-its-taken-you-to-get-a-joke/477712 "2008-12-18T05:56:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2008, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-its-taken-you-to-get-a-joke/477712/61 "2008-12-19T21:39:12Z")
> [@](#): > > It took me about 25 years between the time I first heard the name of the two Disney Chipmunks as a child and the day I realized that their name was a take-off on the famous furniture maker Chippendale. Do I need to point out that Warner Brothers’ Goofy Gophers were named Mac and Tosh? > [@](#): > > Do you mean the gag of Bender putting his arms back on? That’s the one. I assumed the humor of the Chinese joke was that it was describing something that was impossible not because the apples would drop. ---
**Author:** ![welby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@welby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/welby)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2008, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-its-taken-you-to-get-a-joke/477712/62 "2008-12-22T21:00:37Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > I get the joke now, **welby** (don’t feel dumb, because I had to click the link) but why does ht matter that he’s Jewish? I was trying to think of possible stereotypes before I read the explanation. That may’ve been my problem too. I don’t recall the exact passage any more, but the being Jewish has nothing to do with anything, that’s just how the joke was told in the book. ---
**Author:** ![MsJinx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/278dde/32.png) [@MsJinx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsJinx)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2008, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-its-taken-you-to-get-a-joke/477712/63 "2008-12-23T05:13:36Z")
My friends and I would sometimes pass a Jewish cemetary, and one day someone told me that there was a light in every grave. I said really? and stared and stared. I thought I should drive by at night sometime and maybe I’d see the light then. This went on for a long time, whenever we’d drive by there. Maybe a few times they’d say ‘an Isrealite!’, but I didn’t catch on for the longest time. It didn’t help that a nearby business was called Rosenblum’s,and they’d tell me that this was the most beautiful part of town, because there was a Rosenblum on every corner. I was the new kid, so they had a ball doing all of their old schtick on me…over and over and over… ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Klutz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captain_klutz/32/4993_2.png) [@Captain\_Klutz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Klutz)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-its-taken-you-to-get-a-joke/477712/64 "2008-12-26T06:54:06Z")
In the book _Godel, Escher, Bach_ there is a bit where the inner workings of the brain is likened to the interactions between ants in an ant colony. The character describing this is named “Aunt Hillary”. It took me ten years to notice that pun (in my defence, I pronounce Aunt as “aren’t”, not “ant”). ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-its-taken-you-to-get-a-joke/477712/65 "2008-12-26T09:34:12Z")
In second grade another kid and I did a newspaper. The other kid contributed a joke about a man who goes to Texas\* and is told everything’s bigger there. He orders a hanburger and it’s huge. He orders a beer and it’s huge. French fries, huge. Then he asks where the bathroom is, and the bartender tells him to go down the hall and turn left. He goes down the hall, turns right, falls into the swimming pool, and starts yelling “Don’t flush it, don’t flush it.” Ah, second-grade humor. At any rate my co-conspirator contributed this and, knowing fuck-all about layout, put the first part of the joke, down to the French fries, on one page, and the second part at the top of the second page. I did not connect the two. I thought he’d contributed two jokes–one kind of funny, one not so much. I didn’t figure it out for _years_–until I was maybe 26 and going through some really old papers. Of course I was just a little kid. Then when I was a freshman in college somebody told me the joke about the best birth control, a rock in the guy’s shoe. I gleefully repeated this to several people, getting further and further away from the actual punch line, until I ran into somebody who said, "No, you idiot. You said it wrong! It’s, “A rock in his shoe, because it makes him limp,” Not “A rock in his shoe, because then he can’t walk.” I figured they had heard it before. Sadly, that was not the case. Innocent? or clueless? (No, don’t tell me.) \*Which was still the biggest state, when I was in 2nd grade. This has now all been trumped by the joke in _Cat’s Cradle_ which I read in 1971. ---
**Author:** ![Emily\_Litella](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/emily_litella/32/3370_2.png) [@Emily\_Litella](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Emily_Litella)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-its-taken-you-to-get-a-joke/477712/66 "2008-12-26T18:37:34Z")
I didn’t get the “How do you get down off an elephant? You don’t, you get down off a duck” for years and years. I always thought ok, so it’s easier to get down off a duck because it’s a lot shorter. I was lying in bed one night with my head on my nice comfy pillow when I got it. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-its-taken-you-to-get-a-joke/477712/67 "2008-12-26T19:03:37Z")
> [@Emily\_Litella](#): > > I didn’t get the “How do you get down off an elephant? You don’t, you get down off a duck” for years and years. I always thought ok, so it’s easier to get down off a duck because it’s a lot shorter. I was lying in bed one night with my head on my nice comfy pillow when I got it. I remember seeing this in my joke book as a kid and not getting it until my mom explained it. Even then, I didn’t really think it was funny till I was older. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-its-taken-you-to-get-a-joke/477712/68 "2008-12-26T21:51:23Z")
> [@Paladud](#): > > I loved “The Color of Magic” on my first reading, but missed a joke on the first readthrough. I think it was two years later that I realized the meaning of “reflected-sounds-of-underground-spirits” and started laughing my ass off. At myself. It just happened to be my major. I read this, and it was obvious this was a joke, but I couldn’t figure it out what it was referring to. Please, please tell me… what’s the joke? ETA: ‘‘down off a duck’’ :smack: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-its-taken-you-to-get-a-joke/477712.md?page=3)