by Bart King
The next morning, Danny stood by the order counter, smiling at the customers as the manager took their orders. As expected, the small, angry-looking man came to the front of the line and said, “I want a coffee, and I’m not going to pay because I’m not afraid of anybody!”
Danny stepped forward and leaned way down so that his massive head was near the small, angry-looking man’s face. In a deep voice, Danny said, “I’m not afraid of anybody, either.”
The small, angry-looking man nodded, turned to the manager, and said, “Make that two coffees!”
Gross Humor
Q: What did the cannibal eat when he was on a diet?
A: Children.
Dad: Hey kids, did you notice? I bought a new toilet brush for your bathroom.
Son: We noticed, but we still prefer the paper.
A man walks into his grandma’s house. He spots a dish of peanuts on the table and begins eating them. After a while, he says, “Sorry about that, Grandma, but I’ve eaten almost all of your peanuts.”
“That is quite alright,” his grandma replies. “Now that I’ve lost all of my teeth, I can only suck the chocolate coating off of them.”
A four-year-old boy comes out of the bathroom, crying because he dropped his toothbrush in the toilet. After his mom fished it out, she threw it away and gave him a new one.
The boy then handed his mother her toothbrush and said, “I guess we better throw this one out too, because it fell in the toilet last week.”
There was a man who had a big problem. He farted all the time, but he could never smell or hear his farts. He went to the doctor and explained. The doctor considered the problem, and then he wrote the man a prescription and scheduled him to come back for a follow-up appointment.
A week later, the man came back and complained that he was still farting, but now it smelled like rotten eggs! The doctor was pleased, saying, “We’ve cleared your sinuses! Now we just need to work on your hearing.”
A boy named Bud Dudley and his sister Emma were sitting on a couch when the boy farted.
“WHAT was THAT?!” Emma asked.
“Fart football,” Bud explained. “Seven to 0!”
After a while, Emma farted. “Touchdown! Tie score!”
Bud farted again, but quietly, so at first his sister didn’t notice. When she did, she cried, “That was silent, Bud Dudly!”[20]
“That’s right. It’s another touchdown. I’m ahead, 14 to 7.”
The sister gave off a bomber. “Tie score!”
Not wanting to lose, Bud tried really, really, really hard to fart, but he pooped instead. The sound was bad. Bud’s expression was worse.
“What was that?!” Emma asked.
“Halftime. Switch sides!”
Anti-Humor (“No Soap, Radio!”)
Anti-humor is what happens when someone tells a “fake” joke. Not a bad joke, but a joke that isn’t a joke at all. The person telling the joke also needs at least one other person who is “in” on it who can play along.
The key is that the joke has no punch line. Or rather, there is a punch line, but it’s not funny. Something like this:
A goose walks into a yogurt shop and asks if he can have non-fat vanilla yogurt. The clerk says, “I’ve never served yogurt to a goose before.” And the goose says, “No soap, radio!”[21]
At this point, the joke teller and his helper laugh like this is the best joke of all time. Now, what about the confused person? He may laugh along and act like he understands the joke. (Know-it-alls and people who want to fit in might do this.) Or he may ask what’s so funny. (Curious and sincere people do this.)
I guess the person could also think that “No soap, radio” really IS funny. If you ever find someone like this, he may not understand what humor is . . . or he might just be insane.
Little Audrey?!
You have now read a wide variety of jokes. However, I have saved a certain category of humor for now. These are the jokes that are about serious, uncomfortable, and even horrible subjects.
Why would anyone even tell jokes like these? Well, the jokes are so wrong, they can sometimes shock a person into laughing out of surprise. And it’s quite a tradition; people have been telling and retelling these jokes for centuries. Really! For example, there was a character named Little Audrey who showed up many years ago in jokes like this:
Little Audrey and her grandfather were watching a steamroller fix the road in front of their house. Her grandfather was known as a cheapskate, which was important because suddenly he spotted a coin in the road.
“That’s a quarter!” he cried, rushing out to the street. But as he bent to pick it up, the steamroller came along and squished him flat with a horrible sound.
Little Audrey laughed and laughed. She knew all along the coin had only been a nickel!
That’s pretty much the idea behind all the Little Audrey jokes. Something dreadful would happen and then Little Audrey would “laugh and laugh.” Yeesh! Here are some more modern types of Little Audrey jokes. (Jokes about uncomfortable topics are sometimes described as “black humor.”)
A man woke up in the hospital after a terrible tricycle accident. He shouted, “Doctor! Doctor! I can’t feel my legs!”
The doctor replied, “I know you can’t, because I cut off your arms.”
Three hunters were walking along in the forest when they came upon a set of tracks.
The first one said, “Those are deer tracks!”
The second one said, “No, those are bear tracks!”
The third one said, “You’re both wrong. They’re fox tracks.”
The three were still arguing when the train hit them.
A girl was at a sold-out concert, but was disappointed to find that her seats were way up in the rafters. Peering down, she could see that there was an aisle seat close to the stage that had been empty for some time.
Taking a gamble, the girl walked down and asked the closest woman if anyone was sitting there.
“No,” answered the woman.
“Wow,” said the girl, sitting down. “Who would buy such a great seat and then not come to the show?”
“My husband,” said the woman. “We were going to come to the concert together, but he passed away.”
“I’m so sorry!” cried the girl. “But wasn’t there a close friend or relative who could have used the ticket?”
The woman shook her head. “No, they’re all at the funeral.”
Oy vey. In honor of Little Audrey’s achievements, let’s end this section with another one of her adventures.
Little Audrey decided to take skydiving lessons. When she was cleared for her first jump, Little Audrey’s relatives came from far and wide to watch her big day!
After Little Audrey jumped out of the plane, she was very amused. “I fooled them all!” Little Audrey giggled. “I’m not even wearing a parachute!”
And she laughed and laughed all the way down.
Well, there’s no way we can end this chapter like that. Let’s see, what else do I have that could work here? Oh, I know!
Turtle Jokes!
A snail was mugged by two turtles. When the police arrived, they asked the snail to describe what happened.
“I don’t know,” the snail said. “It all happened so fast!”
A man from Los Angeles walks into an ice-cream shop with a turtle under his arm.
”Cool!” the guy at the counter says. “Where did you get it?”
”Los Angeles,” answers the turtle. “They’ve got millions of them there!”
A turtle crawled into an ice-cream shop and asked a customer to hoist him onto the counter. The waiter took the turtle’s order.
“One hot butterscotch sundae,” the turtle said.
The waiter brought the turtle his sundae, and the turtle put a ten-dollar bill on the counter. Thinking the turtle wouldn’t be able to figure out the correct change, the waiter gave him only one dollar in return.
“You know,” said the waiter, “we don’t ge
t many turtles in here.”
“Well,” the turtle replied, “at nine bucks a sundae, you’re not likely to get any more.”
A woman was driving her Mercedes-Benz down a country road when it started making a weird sound. She pulled over and popped the car’s hood, but everything seemed fine.
“The trouble is your carburetor,” said a voice. Looking down, the woman saw a turtle with a red dot on the side of his shell.
“Wow, a talking turtle,” the woman said. “And you know about cars!” She was so excited, she jumped back into her car and drove (weird noise and all) to the closest gas station. There, she got out and told the attendant what happened.
“Did this turtle have a red spot on the side of his shell?” the attendant asked.
“Yes, he did!” said the woman.
“Aw, I wouldn’t pay much attention to him,” said the man. “That turtle, he doesn’t know as much about cars as he thinks he does.”
A family of turtles made some sandwiches and went on a picnic. Because they were turtles, it took them two hours to get to the park, and when they arrived, they realized they’d forgotten a bottle opener.
“Son, you’re the fastest,” said the father turtle. “Would you go back and get it?”
“But if I leave, you will eat all the sandwiches!” the boy turtle said.
All the turtles promised they would wait for him to return before eating, so off the boy turtle went. Two hours. Then four. Then six.
Finally, the father turtle said, “Something must have held him up. Let’s eat!”
But just as they began unwrapping the sandwiches, the boy turtle crawled out from behind a bush. “Ha! I knew this would happen if I left,” he said. “So I didn’t!”
A woman is sitting at home reading a book about a serial-killer turtle when there’s a knock at the door. She opens the door and is shocked to see a turtle sitting on her doorstep!
Alarmed, she picks up the turtle and throws it across the street onto a neighbor’s mossy lawn.
Three hours later, there’s a knock at the door again. The woman opens the door and the same turtle is sitting on the doorstep!
The turtle says, “So what was THAT about?”
Okay, time for a break. Let’s think about this: What is a joke? It can be a lot of things, but there’s almost no joke that doesn’t have some kind of mismatch going on between two out-of-place things. This is often followed by some kind of unexpected ending (the “punch line”).
Example: A girl goes to the dentist. After looking at her teeth, the dentist asks, “Do you eat candy apples?”
“Not right now, thank you,” says the girl. “I had lunch before coming here.”
Okay, it’s not the world’s greatest joke, but you see the pattern: mismatch, punch line. This pattern can also work in real life. For instance, let’s say you’re visiting a relative in the hospital. Looking out the window, you notice that some smart aleck out on the sidewalk is dressed up as the Grim Reaper.
And that meanie is waving to the people inside!
Shocked, you turn to your relative and are surprised to find that he is laughing hysterically. He thinks it’s FUNNY? And because it was so unexpected to see your relative laughing at the Grim Reaper, you starting laughing, too!
Then you go outside and give the Grim Reaper some sugarless gum.
When scientists observe people laughing like this, they find that the parts of the brain linked to “paying attention” are activated. In other words, for a lot of humor, you have to focus and think. When a person laughs, the part of the brain that deals with pleasure is activated. This means that a good joke can make us feel good.
Thanks, Grim Reaper!
Question: Men and women think about humor differently. One group takes longer than the other to decide if something is funny. And once they do, they enjoy the joke more than the other gender. Which one?
The Lowest Form of Fun
Have you ever heard of a pun? It’s a small joke that involves a play of words. So if you see a little kid stub his toe and then start crying, you might say, “Don’t worry, I’ll call the toe truck.” This awesome pun will have the little rascal chuckling and forgetting all about his hurt little piggy.
Or it might make him cry harder!
Some people call the pun the “lowest form of humor.” But I think the lowest form of humor might be what I call “I betchas.” These are challenges that you make to a person that always start with “I bet you that I can . . .” or “I bet you that I can’t . . .”
“I betchas” are almost always pretty cheap. That is, few people will be impressed enough by your cleverness that they will laugh out loud. In fact, they might go kick a wall in order to distract themselves from how horrible your “joke” was. But even so, they might have just a little bit of fun!
Say to your friend, “You’re pretty smart. Why, you’re so smart, I bet you can’t answer four questions wrong!”
Your friend will now want to show you how wrong he can be. To prove him wrong, just lob him three easy questions, like:
What’s your mom’s first name? (Any answer is correct except for his mom’s first name.)
What color is a black bear? (Any answer is correct except for black.)
How long does it take for Saturn to circle the sun? (Any answer is correct, as long as your friend doesn’t guess that the answer is 29.46 Earth years, which is indeed how long it takes Saturn to circle the sun.)
After the third question, look slightly confused and casually say, “Wait, that was the THIRD question, right?” Your friend will probably say, “Yes.” At that point, you’ve won, because you just asked your fourth question, and your friend answered it correctly!
Ha! Here are a few more “I betchas”:
Tell your friend, “I bet you I can stand one inch away from you, and you won’t be able to touch me.” Then have your friend stand in a doorway, close the door, and stand on the other side.
Say to your friend, “I bet you I can find a word in the dictionary that is spelled wrong.” Then open up a dictionary and look up the word “wrong.”
Have your friend stand with his heels against the wall. Then throw a twenty-dollar bill on the ground in front of him and say, “I bet you can’t pick this up with your hands without moving away from the wall.”
Shake your head and say, “I bet you are too cowardly to even try rubbing your ear with your elbow.”
Say, “I bet you can’t even take off your shoes by yourself.” As your friend takes off his shoes, take off your shoes also.
And this last one is a great one. Say to your friend, “I bet I can make lightning and hold it in my hand.” Your friend will scoff, or perhaps run off in terror. Assuming your friend scoffs, here’s what you will need:
A large closet
Long fluorescent (NOT incandescent) light bulbs
A balloon
Blow up the balloon, and then bring your items (fluorescent bulb, blown-up balloon, friend) into the closet. Hand the balloon to your friend and tell him to rub it on his hair for about twenty seconds. Then hold the balloon up to the end of the fluorescent bulb. Wowsers! See how it lights up? That’s because the static electricity from the balloon jumps over to the light bulb.
And that’s how you hold lightning in your hand.
Riddles?!
Although riddles are cooler than “I betchas,” your friends may still think of them as kind of cheap.
But many great writers have enjoyed riddles! For example, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote this riddle, called “Cannot Be Seen.”
It cannot be seen, cannot be felt
Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.
It lies behind stars and under hills,
And empty holes it fills.
It comes first and follows after,
Ends life, kills laughter.
Can you guess the answer? Check the bottom of the page if you give up.[22]
And now, here are a few more riddles:
Q: What do turtles have
that no one else can have?
A: Baby turtles.
Q: This belongs to you. Even so, without borrowing, stealing, or buying it, your friends use it way more than you do. What is it?
A: Your name.
Q: Two mothers and two daughters go fishing. Each of them catches ONE fish, for a total of THREE fish. How is this possible?