Can’t claim this one myself; it was my college buddy Laszlo back in the '70s. There was an evangelist preacher holding forth in the quad and we were there heckling him. The preacher thundered, “Are you ready for the Judgment Day?” and Laszlo instantly snapped back, “No, but armageddon ready for it!”
Here’s one someone played on me.
Several years ago, I suffered a knee injury and had to undergo physical therapy. At the follow-up visit, when the doctor asked how I felt, I told him: "Everything’s fine…except it still hurts when I do this."
With a completely straight face, he said: “Don’t do that.”
I still wonder if he was deliberately making a joke or not.
That was before the injunction against priests getting married. In fact, that injunction was specifically to keep “Pope” from being a hereditary title, after the Borgias.
I was visiting my grandmother in a nursing home. Across the hall from grandma’s room, there was a Hispanic woman, who complained a lot. It is possible that she was in pain, but most people in the area thought she was being theatrical. Every few minutes, she would say “Ay! Ay! Ay! Ay!” One of the staff muttered under her breath “Canta, y no llores.”
When I was in college, the student union had a small theater, which often played arthouse films, or old classic movies. One night, they showed the George Pal version of War of the Worlds. Near the end, when the Martians are dying of earthly diseases, one of the airships crashes to the ground. A hatch opens, and an alien arm reaches out. It twitches a bit, then falls limp. One of the human characters watches this, then says, “It’s dead!”
Somewhere in the back of the theater, someone said “Jim!” in a perfect DeForest Kelly voice. Everyone in the theater burst out laughing.
A few years ago, I walked into a meeting right before it began when everyone was talking among themselves. One of the managers turned to me and asked “Do you use foul language?”. My manager and supe were then looking. I deadpanned “Chicken, duck, turkey, pheasant”. It took him a minute, but the manager asking the question finally got it and laughed along with the rest.
My ex girlfriend “Fuck my brains out!”
Me " I think someone already did that."
I teach sixth graders.
I get set up 10 times a day.
Of course I pretend like I’m not handed double entendres wrapped up as gifts (ew…creepy teacher…). Makes me wonder what I ever said at that age that was totally innocent but could be taken as filthy.
And I’m glad I don’t have to deal with 8th graders who actually get the double entendres…
My friend posted a quote to his Facebook wall:
“A little poison now and then does the body good.”
–Nietzsche
I got in with the first comment:
“Yeah, I heard ‘Every Rose has its Thorn’ was like his favorite song ever.”
In a graduate school class we were shown the Frederick Wiseman documentary about Kansas City cops, “Law and Order,” and had an actual police chief run a discussion session afterward. He asked for our thoughts, and I said “well, the police seemed unnecessarily brutal to the vagrant they were shoving into the police van - they didn’t have to be so rough, the could have handled him more gently.”
The chief thought I was being unfair, and tried to explain it from the cops’ point of view: “Look, you don’t know what it’s like dealing with these people. The guy probably has lice. He probably stinks to high heaven. Hell, for all the cops know he’s gonna vomit all over them at any moment.”
To which I responded, “Yeah, and that’s EXACTLY why you ought to handle him gently.”
Not side-clutchingly hilarious by any means, but it got an appreciative laugh from my classmates. And it was a good point, too.
Story the first: My low-level D&D party had trouble putting down a Naga. We finally had to pull out all of the stops and pretty well kept bashing, slashing, and fireballing at it until it stopped moving. When the GM was toting up the points he said off handedly, “It’s too bad you were so rough on it; Naga skins are valuable,” to which one of the newer players asked, “They are?”
“Where do you think Naugahyde comes from?” was my instant retort.
Story the second: Same group, come to think of it, was at our favorite Japanese restaurant. One of the guys doted on spring rolls so he’d order a plateful just for himself. Biting into one, he paused, then fished a half-inch piece of rubberband out of his mouth. “There’s a rubberband in my spring roll!” he complained.
(shrug) “Musta run out of springs.”
Setup: I’m a huge Looney Tunes fan.
Awhile back, two ladies at the office were discussing their love of horses. One said that she was learning about Arabians, and the other one said that she liked Quarter-horses. In my best Daffy Duck impression, I interjected
“Actually, it’s a buck and a quarter Quarter-horse, but I’m not gonna tell her that!”
The latter continued speaking a couple of words, stopped, and with a bemused look said “What?”
Alone again!
This set-up was so perfect it didn’t really even need a punch line…
Setting: Outdoor bar patio after a co-ed kickball game. A girl from the other team was sitting with us, flirting with my friend Dave. In the few minutes she’d been sitting with us, she had asked about his heritage (he’s half-Korean), and then we started discussing the difficulties of dating being a shorter man (he’s about 5’ 6"). During the middle of this conversation, a server came around looking for someone who had ordered an appetizer…
“Asian shrimp? Asian shrimp??!”
Dave just raised a finger, “That would be me!”.
The entire table just erupted. Never laughed so hard in my life. To this day I still feel sorry for the server, who was obviously dumfounded as to why we were suddenly in hysterics. I tried to compose myself enough to explain to her that she just gave us the best story ever, but I couldn’t get it together. Maybe she’ll read this someday and put it all together…
Deployed to Iraq, I had just returned from a forward base to the home base.
After getting off the helicopter, I checked in with housing and was assigned a new POD*.
I dropped off my gear there, and headed to the operations trailer to a hearty welcome home from the team.
It was early evening, but several of them were still there. Ted, the boss, was at his computer, and he asked me what my new POD number was, to enter it into the locator system.
“P2”, I answered.
“Hey!” said Gary, a teammate. “That’s next door to me!”
“Well, you’ll be able to hear me sing!”, I laughed.
“Do you sing in the shower?”, Gary asked.*
“Yes I do!” I answered.
“P2?” asked Ted, confirming the POD number.
Pause.
“No Ted, I just sing in there!”
*Personalized Outdoor Dwelling, basically a furnished shipping container.
**The shower units were located in between the POD’s.
I work in a store with two brothers from Mexico. One was standing on a ladder while the other one was running into the same aisle with a long train of shopping carts.
Manager: What do you call that?
Me: Irresistable force meets immovable object?
Manager: I was thinking “Mexican standoff.”
I laughed, Really hard.
My daughter was nine, and had been playing in my D&D campaign for a year, so she new about the races & classes & the world & stuff. She walked into the computer room to ask a question, as she was working on a report for school.
Her: What do you call the people who live in forests and work with trees?
Me: Druids.
Her: sigh audible eye roll In the REAL world?
Me: Oh. Rangers.
Her: FINE! I’ll just go look it up MYSELF!!! exit stage right
I got sent to the principal’s office in 5th grade for that. This kid was constantly picking on me for most of the year. Near the end of year, when it was warm (and he was wearing shorts), he was sitting nearby with his friends when he noticed a red welt on his leg. He made a comment about it; I remarked “Cancer. Could be cancer.” Deadpan serious, went on for quite awhile.
He finally got upset, teacher came over, intervened and off to the office I went. I knew the principal fairly well (my dad was a principal in the same system; school authorities didn’t scare me) so when she quizzed me about it I told her a) he’s been picking on me all year and b) if I was right I just saved his life.
She laughed, told me she couldn’t disagree but got me to agree to knock it off and back to class I went.
Just tonight:
5 year-old was watching Shaun the Sheep and asked my wife “What are sheep made of?”
Mrs Pope: “Well, they are a lot like us, skin and bone and muscles and blood, things like that.”
Kid #2: “Blood. That means if it bleeds.” pauses to gather thoughts
Me: "we can kill it!’
That got me the look from my wife but as a true child of the '80’s I couldn’t let that pass.
Muscle, and blood, and skin, and bones,
A mind that’s weak, and a back that’s strong.
I was at a singing ‘masterclass’ a few years ago which is basically a public singing lesson where you sing your piece then an eminent singer/teacher critiques you, for your benefit and that of the (small) audience. Typically a number of singers will be present. The song I was singing was some sort of love song, and the teacher asked one of the other young lady singers (I am male - remember this, it’s important to the story) to sit 3 feet directly in front of me so I was singing the song to her. “Nothing too personal”, the teacher said airily, “no exchanging of bodily fluids or anything,” to which I responded “Well I’d struggle to reach from here.” Got a good laugh and both the teacher and girl were a bit embarrassed - I apologised to them afterwards for any offence caused, but I just couldn’t pass that opportunity up.
I’ve had a problem all my life with the muscles in my eyes – they don’t focus quickly. This has caused me issues with standardized tests when I was younger (filling in circles on the wrong lines, causing all my answers to be one-line off), video games (I can’t track moving objects on a screen very well), and even (until I adapted to it) working in Windows. The transition for me from DOS to Windows way back when was very traumatic for thiat reason.
Anyway, back when the problem was first identified (maybe I was 12 or 13 or so, I went to see an ophthalmologist. He gave me eye exercises to do – focusing exercises that were supposed to make my eye muscles stronger (turned out he was a quack, but that’s a story for another time). So my mom picks me up at the doctor’s office, and my younger brother is in the car. And I told them that the doctor told me I had to do these eye exercises every day.
My little brother asked me “what kind of eye exercises?”
To which I replied “Push ups”
I tell you, he just winced and stared at me, speechless for a few minutes, obviously trying to picture it.